


No Bed of Roses

by montparnasse



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:58:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/montparnasse/pseuds/montparnasse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miranda had a plan. A nice, easy plan to have it out with Jack in the comfort of her own cabin when Shepard finally stopped hovering like a worried mother hen. They would beat each other senseless. There would be insults. And it would be bloody glorious.</p>
<p>But then they made it back from that one-way trip, and things changed. Miranda changed. Jack changed. And somewhere along the line, a mutual desire to bash each other’s heads in turned into something strange and very, very messy.</p>
<p>And Miranda doesn’t have a plan for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a short 1000-word-or-so thing, but then it turned into a 6000-word-or-so thing, and then it turned into this. Being concise is not one of my strong points, I think.
> 
> But. I have wanted to write these two since I was a fetus. I only hope I’ve done them some small justice.

If Miranda remembers correctly—and she _always_ remembers correctly—Jack once threatened to smear the walls of the Normandy with her brains, sell her teeth on Omega and break every single one of her fingers in a new and exciting way. And Miranda had promised—and Miranda _always_ keeps her promises—to have it out with her proper, like a woman should, when this business with those nasty bug-eyed aliens was all settled and she could safely pour all her energy into bouncing Jack’s head off the door of her cabin.

She’d planned for it, too. Even set a date and bought a bottle of celebratory wine (because really, she wouldn’t lose to _that_ ) right before they took off for that relay that was going to lead them to who-knows-where, but.

But.

Few things had gone off without a hitch during this whole mission, and when she catches Jack looking sidelong at her a few times (five times, actually, but it’s not like she’s counting) while they’re still cleaning debris out of the CIC, Miranda decides that maybe, _maybe_ , this would be a good time to practice letting bygones be bygones. Or however that goes, if it truly goes at all.

She’s ruminating on the particulars of that bit of silliness when Jack snaps at her from where Miranda is standing by the elevator, much like an angry varren, hackles raised and all.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” She half-yells, half-hisses, because apparently when Miranda was thinking of how best to utterly ignore the situation, she was doing it while fixated on the tattoos and the sprinkling of scars decorating Jack’s torso, and wow, those things really do cover a lot of ground. Impressive, really. Even more impressive (and highly troubling) that she hadn’t realized she was doing it.

Jack stalks toward her, and before it can escalate to the point that Shepard must again intervene so insufferably, she punches the elevator button and snarls, “Not much,” because really, who does this woman—this _child_ —think she is?

It’s entirely the wrong thing to say, and she knows it. If she didn’t, the obscenities and the fists being hurled at the door would have told her as much, and part of Miranda—a bigger part than she’d like to admit—wishes she hadn’t done it.

She retreats to her room, because there’s much to be done, and she stays there even when everyone else goes out for drinks or shopping or murdering or whatever it is people do on Omega. The Normandy is huge, and she has a lot of mouths to feed and no feasible way to do it now that they’ve been cut off from Cerberus. Jack, she knows, will curl up in her little hole down in engineering and do nothing while Miranda stays up all night talking to bureaucrats on Illium, to people on the Citadel she never, ever wanted to speak to again, to people from all corners of the galaxy who owe her favors just so they can get through another few days, and the thought of it would be nausea-inducing if Miranda hadn’t already begun calculating every bit of this the moment Shepard set that timer in the Collector base. It feels like half a lifetime ago.

Pretty soon, Shepard will probably burst into her cabin, interrupt her work to tell her she needs to apologize to Jack, and then they’ll have this awkward, barely civil stalemate again, like a ceasefire where neither side ever actually stops pointing guns or hurling cheap insults at the other. She can feel the headache coming on already, because she doesn’t want _this_ again and she doesn’t want to deal with Shepard right now either, but most of all, Miranda isn’t sure she’s the same woman she was six months ago. In fact, she’s sure of it—because she’s _always_ sure—and she thinks that she should maybe take the initiative and go talk to Jack this time, like an adult, and when did she start caring about so much about hurt feelings, anyway? She’s not sure whether to blame Shepard for this or so much time away from the core of Cerberus, but either way, now’s not the time.

Now’s not the time, but that’s never stopped Shepard. Today is no exception.

“You need to talk to her. Actually talk, not just act superior and condescending.”

She is very good at being superior and condescending. She takes pride in it. “And if she behaves like a child and starts screaming the moment she sees me?”

“Then that’s your problem. No fighting, though. You’re both better than this.” And, damn it, she can’t stand it when Shepard acts like a long-suffering mother hen who’s disappointed in her chicks.

Miranda makes her calls and sends out far more messages than she’d like, even threatens a few agents out in the Traverse, but she also spends a lot of time that evening thinking of those scars on Jack’s belly, of the things they’d seen on Pragia, of how maybe, possibly, she might have been wrong all along.

* * *

She mostly keeps to her cabin for the next few days, burning bridges and whispering veiled threats over her omni-tool, not even bothering to take some shore leave when they dock at Illium to let any Cerberus loyalists go their own ways. She is, to the shock of some of the crew, not one of them, and it almost ( _almost_ ) warms her heart to find that no one else is, either.

But Miranda has work to do, and cannot be deterred by the drunken escapades of crewmates and the worried wonderings of where their next paycheck is going to come from, because it’s her job to quell those fears and line their pockets with money for terrible liquor and Omega strippers. So, she takes her meals in her room and does not mention the stares she draws from Vakarian and Tali’Zorah. (Shepard, for her part, never doubted her, and she takes a small amount of pride in knowing this. More than she probably should, but then, that seems to be par for the course these days.)

It’s about midnight, or at least she _thinks_ it’s about midnight, when she finishes feeding some backchannel information to an Alliance informant ( _how_ she loathes it) and decides that after the fourth day straight of missing dinner and staring at a computer screen all evening, she could really, _really_ do with a drink.

For a while, it’s just her, a bottle of white Zinfandel and the dark kitchen, the soft hum of the ship providing some nice background noise while she plans out her schedule for tomorrow. Miranda likes planning, because if you plan, if you have a schedule, if you map out your life and don’t let the cows get in your way, you have certainty; and if you have certainty, you have power. The former, she loves; the latter, she’s grown into like some women grow into their silk and diamonds.

Miranda also likes wine. She’s never cared for the piss that so fascinates most of the rest of the crew, who go to Omega and Dark Star and drink until it makes them stupid or maudlin or—worse—both, like adolescent boys with a bottle of vodka in their parents’ garage. She tries to keep a few bottles tucked away for herself in the kitchen and her cabin, mostly human-made, some asari and salarian. One, a crisp rosé champagne, she’s been saving for a while now; for what, she’s not sure, because if destroying the Collector base and telling the Illusive Man where he can shove it and just how hard doesn’t qualify, she isn’t sure what does. But.

She’s about to pour herself another glass and head back to her cabin to stare out the window when she hears the soft hiss of the elevator door. At first, she assumes it’s Mordin heading to the med bay, but the obnoxious thud of those heavy boots could be only one of two people. And it’s not Massani.

Jack looks at her with the sneer Miranda assumes she practices in the bathroom mirror every morning, and before she can curse herself for not immediately retreating to her room with her bottle, Jack is leaning on the table, trapping her there and showing her teeth.

“Where are your friends, cheerleader?” Miranda’s fingers twitch. “Drinking alone like a pussy. Drinking _wine_ , like a pussy.”

“Charming, aren’t you?”

“You fucking bitch.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been hiding in there for a week now,” Jack says, and she’s smiling but her face is all twisted, _wrong_ , and her voice is like poison in Miranda’s ear. “Scared of me, bitch?”

“And I suppose you think I ought to be,” she spits, and Miranda isn’t scared, she isn’t scared of _anything_ and how dare she, when Miranda has been the one making sure they still have fuel to burn, food to eat, that they haven’t all been arrested or executed or vaporized or whatever by the Alliance or Cerberus or both yet, and what has Jack even done?

“Keep your damn voice down.” Jack glares and stops mid-curse. “If I have to suffer through you _and_ Shepard again, this whole ship will pay for it.”

“ _Fuck_ you.” Jack keeps hissing like a viper—a _quiet_ viper, now—and Miranda just sits and seethes, because this could all have gone so well if she’d just stayed in her cabin for the evening.

Jack doesn’t go, though, either out of spite or anger or something else Miranda doesn’t care to comprehend, and for her part, she is mostly silent. When Miranda moves again, Jack bares her teeth and leans away from the table, shows her back, and Miranda finds herself staring again. Jack is all wiry muscle and ink and for some reason Miranda is finding it increasingly difficult to stop mentally tracing them and wondering where all those scars came from, who gave them to her and why and who they have to kill to make sure no child ever has to go through that again. She doesn’t say it, because she doesn’t say a lot of things, but Miranda _regrets_ , and that’s not a feeling she’s ever liked.

After a while, Jack stretches a bit—and if she didn’t know better she’d swear Jack knows she’s watching—and whips her head around because Jack likes to look you in the eye when she’s shouting insults or threatening to rip you apart. “You’re such a fucking bitch. You know that?” It’s quieter than she’d expected, and then her back is to Miranda again and she can see the thin patterns of crisscrossed scars beneath the ink. One of them curls angrily around her hip. “Because I can’t fucking stand—”

“A bitch, yes, I am,” Miranda snaps, and that’s _it_. Fighting in the kitchen in the middle of the night won’t do, but she doesn’t have a plan and she needs to do something with her fingers to keep from throwing Jack across the room, and she can _feel_ the air practically bend and break around Jack’s clenched fists, just waiting for a chance. So she gets up and pushes past Jack, slams another wine glass on the table (she’s sure she’s cracked the stem), and with great prejudice, she pours two glasses of white Zinfandel. And then, before she can change her mind, she grits her teeth and shoves it out.

“I apologize,” she says, sharp, like ripping off an old bandage that’s going to come up with a lot of blood. “For the other day.”

And Jack looks at her like she’s started talking in tongues. Her eyes narrow, just slightly, and she does not unclench her fists. It’s fine; neither of them is used to apologies and likely never will be, and knowing Jack, she expects an ulterior motive here, a ploy to get something out of her or hurt her, and that, Miranda understands very well. She cannot even remember the last time she admitted fault. She’s far more used to her quiet system of debt, of acknowledging that she owes someone something or that she has the upper hand the next time she needs a favor. The intricacies of such a thing would probably be lost on Jack, though, so here she goes, taking the direct, diplomatic approach. Shepard would be so bloody _proud_.

“You expect me to drink that shit?”

“Drink it. Don’t. I don’t care.” Miranda takes another sip, lets the wine linger on her tongue and decides it’s gotten warm and slightly sour. She makes a show of not looking at Jack, who seems to be making a show of not looking at her, too.

“Fuck you.”

“Articulate as ever.”

But Jack does eventually sit down across from her, makes a face and gulps down several mouthfuls of wine like it’s fucking Omega pisswater, and Miranda wants to tell her, no, that’s not how you do it, but she doesn’t. Instead, they sit in the quiet, listening to the hum of the Normandy, glancing furtively at each other every so often, and, well, Miranda didn’t plan this out at all.

“I’m so _tired_ ,” Jack says after what feels like ages, a little quieter than usual, and it might be the wine, but Miranda nods. Miranda looks at her and says, “I know.” Because she does. God, but she _does_.

Between drinks, Jack looks right at her, hard, and says, “No, you don’t. You really, really don’t,” and Miranda’s eyes linger a little too long at her collar bone, the tiny scar at the hollow of her throat. (She really, _really_ didn’t plan this.)

And then it’s quiet again. Miranda opens another bottle, and Jack drinks too fast and she drinks too slow, but eventually they finish it, too. They sit in the kitchen for hours. They say almost nothing.

* * *

“We can’t keep this up. You know we can’t. We’re going to have to do something eventually.”

Jacob is pacing in the Communications Room, worry creasing his brow. They’re going after a squad of Blue Suns who have hijacked a ship in the Hades Nexus cluster, the eighth or ninth such odd job they’ve taken this month. Jacob has mixed feelings about it, as he does about so very many things. Miranda has no such reservations; they’re getting paid, which takes care of one problem, and they’re helping rid the galaxy of a particularly revolting scourge in the process. It’s almost like charity work.

“We should go to the Alliance.” He is stony-faced and obstinate, always, but in this, he is malleable enough. He meets Miranda’s eyes and then looks away.

It’s always been a little awkward with Jacob, will always be a little awkward, but Miranda appreciates his honesty, the quiet, soothing ripples he makes when he walks into a room. Jacob has large, calloused hands and a deep voice, he knows a thousand ways to kill a man and he is always sure that things will work out in the end for better or worse; and, even if Jacob doesn’t know who the hell he is or what he wants, there’s no one else she would rather have on board. But if he just didn’t have to be so damn _reasonable_.

“You know we can’t do that,” she says. “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” he repeats, his face a blank slate.

They can’t, and they won’t, because it’s not even an option at the moment (and for her, at least, it never will be). The second they go to the Alliance, they’ll all be grounded, chained, collared, and maybe there will be a trial while the higher-ups try to decide if these “Reapers” are _really_ a threat, and maybe it will even be over before they blow Earth to pieces, but it’s not a risk Miranda is willing to take right now. Or, _they_ can take it if they like, but she’ll be long gone by the time they run back to those fools expecting anything short of incompetence and galactic embarrassment.

Fortunately, Shepard agrees. They still need information, resources, still need to do what they can, and, and—oh, maybe this is Jacob and Shepard and their damned bleeding hearts oozing all over her, but she would not see this crew come to harm in any way. Not the cook, not the engineers, not the smart-assed pilot.

Not Jack.

Beside her, Shepard taps her temple with her index finger and sighs. “Got anything else for us, Miranda?”

She does. “Five more lined up for the next two weeks.” All of them pirates and some especially nasty mercenaries. Like they’re exterminators.

“I don’t know what we would do without you,” Shepard says, and Miranda knows she means it. She always does.

She takes the elevator down to the crew deck with Shepard and Jack walks past them, no doubt slinking off back to engineering after grabbing something to eat. Neither of them glare or spit venom for a change; Jack gives her a stiff nod, and Miranda does the same, and then she can just _feel_ Shepard looking from her to Jack and back again. And so, she makes sure to lock her door because she’s not at all in the mood for the inevitable interrogation about _that_. Not yet.

* * *

Oriana Lawson is the most beautiful thing in the galaxy. Which might seem an odd thing to say about your sister who is also technically your identical twin, but it’s not as if they’re the same person. Not even a little.

For one, Oriana has the most amazing smile, all teeth and unabashed joy, and Miranda’s never had that, not even when she was a small child. Instead, she’s got more of a smirk that ranges from smug and self-satisfied to irritated and you-clever-bastard-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that, and she’s sure her eyes were never so bright. Oriana talks faster, makes excited gestures with her hands and has this full, happy laugh that makes something warm and utterly blissful well up in Miranda’s chest, makes her remember the few times she held Ori before she was placed with her family, and sometimes, when she flashes that smile and talks about baking cookies with her mother or plays her violin, it’s all Miranda can do to keep from weeping.

Everyone, she thinks, should have a sister. Everyone.

But she forgets, sometimes, that Oriana is just as smart, just as clever, just as willful and intuitive as she is, and when it comes out, she’s not always sure how to react. Like right now, when Ori mentions Cerberus and the Normandy and hints in a rather unsubtle way that she knows Miranda is sort of, kind of on the run, and part of Miranda wants to tell her that everything will work out soon enough (because Miranda may not have a plan yet but she _will_ ), and another part wants to reach through the damned screen and hug her because she is her sister and she is truly the most marvelous thing in this galaxy.

“You could come stay with me, you know,” Oriana says, leaning close to the screen, and now she looks a little worried and that will not do.

The offer makes Miranda’s throat feel tight, and were it under different circumstances, she thinks she might even do it. She could take off for a week or two, share her sister’s bedroom, get to know her adoptive family. Have dinner with them, take Oriana shopping, go to her recitals, help with her homework, braid each other’s hair before bed and tell secrets in the dark. Because that is what sisters do, and even though Miranda isn’t sure she would be any good at it, even though she might feel like she was just pretending to be someone else the whole time, Miranda _wants_.

“I can’t, Ori,” she says, and it actually hurts, a little. “I would, but I can’t.”

Somehow, the topic keeps turning back to the Normandy and its strange, colorful crew, and Miranda actually makes Oriana laugh a few times with some heavily edited stories about Kasumi and that salarian Spectre who’d been after her for years, and then some more about Mordin’s many, many quirks, but when her sister asks about Jack _by name_ , Miranda blinks a few times and tries not to look as shocked as she feels.

“The other biotic,” Ori tells her, like she’s suddenly forgotten the foul-mouthed woman she was scheduled to beat to a pulp weeks ago. “The one with all the tattoos who was there with you and Shepard. What’s she like?”

Of course. Nos Astra. Shepard had insisted they bring Jack along with them and Miranda had quietly protested, because this wasn’t some shitty planet they could shoot up and forget about, this was Oriana, this was hers, this was the biggest part of her _self_ she had ever given anyone, and Jack would stomp all over that and defile the pieces.

But she hadn’t. Jack was mostly quiet when she wasn’t raining down biotic fury, and now that she thinks on it, Miranda was grateful. Jack had helped save her sister and she’d thanked Shepard, but she’d never said a word to Jack. And Jack had never said a word to _her_ about Pragia, either.

“She’s—she’s difficult,” Miranda says, and Oriana asks if _she_ has any tattoos.

They talk a while longer, decide to talk again the day after next like they always do, and at Oriana’s insistence, she promises she will call her if she needs anything at all (she will not), and they also plan to meet up on Nos Astra soon, if only for an afternoon (she will, she _will_ ).

“Sleep tight, Miranda.” Oriana blows her a kiss, and what Miranda would give, just to kiss her baby sister goodnight. Just once.

“Sweet dreams, Ori,” she smiles, and when she turns out the light, she tries not to think of Jack and Jack’s tattoos and the scars across her belly and the damned stink of Pragia and how maybe she owes her something _else_.

* * *

The next day finds her standing at the exit of a not-so-abandoned warehouse on some forsaken planet overrun with Blood Pack trash, her only instructions being, “Kill anyone who tries to get through.”

It’s simple enough. It’s quiet enough, too, because Shepard decided Jack should stay with her, and rather than go straight for each other’s throats the way they used to do, it’s become a bit awkward, and Miranda has never known what to do with awkward. Jack stares straight ahead, bounces on the balls of her feet every so often, and Miranda almost wishes a krogan would charge them just to give her something to do.

It doesn’t happen, though. It doesn’t look like _anything_ is going to happen, and Miranda is just about to open her mouth to attempt something civil that she will probably immediately regret, but Jack beats her to it.

“This sucks,” she says, and yeah, that’s about right.

“It’s money. Buys us a little more time.”

Jack snorts. “For what? If she thinks I’m gonna hand my ass over to the Alliance, she’s got another thing coming.”

Miranda glances at her. Jack’s cheekbones are high, almost gold in the muted sunlight that’s leaking through the cracks of the roof. She doesn’t notice any scars above the neck and she realizes suddenly, because it is a fact like the dust on her shoes and the gun in her hand, that Jack is beautiful. Almost violently so.

“What _will_ you do?” She is genuinely curious. She once heard Jack talking about being a pirate, how Shepard could live like a queen if she wanted, and she wonders if this is what Jack has in mind. She would be good at it, Miranda thinks, if she hasn’t gone too soft under Shepard’s watch, and who among them hasn’t at least sprouted a conscience or nurtured the seeds of doubt in these past months?

Jack looks at her, sidelong like she sometimes does, eyes wandering up and down like she’s sizing her up, and what is _that_ all about? She’s probably a good five years older than Jack, at least, and yet she feels her face heat just slightly when Jack’s eyes linger at her hips.

“I haven’t gotten that far,” Jack says, lower than usual, and then she’s staring straight ahead again.

She isn’t sure what to make of that, because it feels like Jack just threw her something, exposed a small piece of herself and gave it to Miranda to look over and do with it what she will. Miranda has five hundred different things to say in situations like this, things she uses to get what she needs and extract what she’s been ordered, but these things are tricky when they’re real, and she has never had a plan for _that_. Why would she?

So she just says, “Neither have I,” because, well, she hasn’t, and then their eyes meet, very briefly. And that’s the end of that, because about eight seconds later, Shepard emerges with Tali and Mordin, who are looking rather pleased with themselves (or, Shepard and Mordin are).

“No action down here, I take it?” She grins, and Miranda can tell she’s not yet come down from that battle high she gets from emptying her SMG into a crowd of mercenary assholes just begging for it. Then they’re back on the shuttle, making some calls, collecting their money, and she doesn’t have time to think about the way Jack watches her when she thinks Miranda isn’t looking, or the how she wishes Shepard had taken just a little longer to clear out those men.

* * *

Two nights later, Jack stays for dinner. Actually sits down and has dinner with the rest of the crew like a normal, well-adjusted person might. Miranda wouldn’t be there herself, but Shepard had noticed her absence most evenings and insisted she stay, and, well, who’s going to resist when Shepard asks?

Jack takes a seat with Samara, and damn it, that’s where _she_ was going to sit, and it’s probably not a good idea to just plop down next to Jack even if she kind of thinks she wants to talk to her. Then again, Samara is there and Samara is like a steady stream of water that courses straight to your center. She doesn’t judge, won’t mention it if she sits next to Jack even though she knows their history like the rest of the crew, won’t make pithy comments she’s had planned out for months like certain other people around here do. She will simply let it be. Miranda thinks Samara could probably tame lions if she just sat and had a nice talk with them.

So, she sits.

“Miranda,” Samara says, and she’d never say it, but Miranda is pretty sure she could listen to Samara speak all day. “It is good to see you. Shepard tells me you have been very busy.”

“That, I have,” she admits. Beside her, Jack stabs at her chicken, and already she wonders if this was a mistake, but. “Everything’s been fine, I hope?”

“I have been well.” Even the way she _eats_ is graceful. “Eventually, I think I will return to Thessia, but for now, I will stay where I am needed.”

Miranda is happy about that, really. She’s quite fond of Samara, loves her stories and her centuries-old wisdom, and she will be genuinely sorry to see her leave. But, people come and go. It is a fact, hard as iron, a lesson she has learned over and over. She is reminded of Niket, and sinks her knife into her chicken.

“Do you know where you will go, after all this?” She’s asking Miranda, and, well, she still hasn’t given this much more thought. In fact, she has been making a large and obvious point of avoiding it, talking with Oriana, planning their next raid on some slavers, cashing in on favors long overdue.

“I… don’t know,” she says, and it’s a quiet thing, honest, because you can be nothing _but_ honest with Samara. She weeds out lies and uncertainties like pruning a vine. “For once, I don’t know.” Suddenly, she feels tired again, if she ever actually stopped.

She hums thoughtfully at that, spears a piece of lettuce. “It will come to you,” she says, and when she smiles like that, Miranda can almost believe her.

She can feel Jack doing that _thing_ she does next to her from the corner of her eye, that sidelong glance again, except this time she’s leaning on her fist and staring right at her. So, not sidelong. Ogling, more like. Miranda suddenly wishes she were as regal an eater as Samara.

“And what about you, Jack? Do you know what you want?”

Miranda doesn’t look. She doesn’t. (But she wants to.)

“Hell if I know,” she mumbles. Miranda watches her reach for her glass, and she’s pretty sure her arms are more ink than skin. It’s strangely mesmerizing, and of course Jack catches her looking. She is slowly learning (and learning a little too late) that Jack seems to be acutely aware of when someone is looking at her.

“Like what you see, princess?” She drawls, and she’s doing this on _purpose_. Like it’s a great big joke, or something. Miranda just swallows and averts her eyes.

“Perhaps if I liked women with more tattoos than a batarian slaver and mouths like a tar pit,” she snaps, and Jack snorts and takes a long drink. There’s not much venom in her words, not like there used to be, and Jack looks out at her over the rim of her glass, looks her over just like she had the other day and then meets her eyes in something suspiciously resembling a challenge. Or maybe that’s just in Miranda’s head. Maybe Jack has decided to slowly drive her mad now that they’ve got this unspoken agreement to not kill each other on sight. (She doesn’t think so.)

She leaves right after she’s finished, just a few minutes later, and Miranda can’t help but watch her go, clunky boots, long-legged gait and all those tattoos, and she is again certain that Jack knows. She isn’t sure what to make of this. She still hasn’t said a word about Illium, or Pragia, or a few other things she can’t figure out how to put to words just yet, and she has no idea what to do with this, this, this _thing_ that just happened. Whatever it is.

“I do believe there is something different about these tomatoes,” Samara says. She looks like she’s considering something, and Miranda is entirely sure it’s not the tomatoes.

* * *

It’s three in the morning and she can’t sleep, and when she can’t sleep, Miranda thinks of all sorts of unsavory things. Like the Alliance catching up with them, or her father figuring out where she’s hidden Oriana, or Cerberus agents ambushing them when they land on some cold rock in the middle of nowhere. She thinks of what she’s going to do when Shepard decides it’s time, and with the kind of existential horror she thought reserved for teenage nihilists, she realizes that for the first time in a very long time, she does not know where she is going or what she’ll do, and she may have little control over it in the end.

She is so very, very tired. But, _No, you don’t_ , Jack had said. And. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she can’t understand what that’s like, to have to cut and run at a moment’s notice, to be a prisoner in ways Miranda has never truly known, and to just be so hideously, achingly tired of it all.

She sits up and looks through her schedule for tomorrow. Mercenaries in the morning and a short stop on Illium, no doubt to see Dr. T’Soni again. She’ll have to make some more calls, and she’s got a visit with Lanteia in the evening. A busy day, and all she can think is how she’d like to spend half of it in bed with a cup of tea and maybe someone to talk to. She can’t call Oriana, because she would never burden her sister with things like this, and Shepard has more than enough to deal with right now and likely always will. Samara would listen, because Samara always listens, but that doesn’t feel right, either.

She’s always gotten by on her own, because she is all she needs. She learned from a young age to swallow her problems until they digested and she was done with it, but.

But.

She still envied other girls their mothers and friends when she was growing up, knowing it was something she would never truly have. On the rare occasion that she made a friend or found someone who would listen, who made her feel _normal_ , she always knew separation was inevitable. Her father didn’t want her associating with people because then she might get ideas, and ideas that weren’t his weren’t welcome. And then, they simply became one less thing in her life, and that was that.

Learn to live with it. Do not attach yourself to anything. Expect only of yourself. Do not hope for someone to understand you, to save you, to need you. Know yourself, know what you want, tattoo it onto your mind like prayer and let it be your solace.

It was part of the reason she was so desperate to free Oriana from his death grip. She didn’t want her sister to turn out like _her_.

She spoke to Jacob about this, once, and he had listened like he always had, but he didn’t understand, not really, and she always felt a little strange talking about these things with him. Jacob never budged. Things moved Jacob, sure, but he would never show it. And, in truth, Miranda has always been more comfortable in the company of other women, which she blames partly on her father and partly on many of the other men she’s known. Men always _want_ something from her, they’re always so willing to try and take it whether she’s offered it or not, and Miranda is rarely willing to give of herself lest she spend every last cent of what she’s worked for all these years.

That’s probably true of many women, though. Shepard and Samara, definitely. And Jack. Jack, too.

She still hasn’t spoken to Jack, not about anything at all, and she supposes she could seek her out, just casually stumble into engineering—as if she has ever done that before—and start talking, but that feels all wrong, as if she would be trampling on something that wasn’t hers, and _how_ she would hate that if it were her. There’s also no guarantee that Jack would listen long enough to hear it, or even that she wants to; Jack is a tight bundle of violence and fork-tongued spite, less so than she used to be around Miranda, but it’s still unwise to assume anything.

But. They’ve shared a bottle of wine. They’ve had dinner without killing each other. They’ve even exchanged a handful of sentences and some strange glances and if Jack were a man (or maybe any other woman), Miranda would know _exactly_ what they meant and she might even do something about it.

She turns over in bed. This is unfamiliar territory and she really doesn’t like unfamiliar territory, not on top of everything else that’s going on, but with all these _things_ that seem to keep getting stuck in her throat in the middle of the night, this one has become the most persistent. And nothing good ever comes from letting these things fester.

Better to rip it off. Like a bandage. _Again_.

So, Miranda starts to plan.

* * *

Two days later and she’s waiting for Shepard again, on a hazy planet full of vorcha that she really does not like. This time, it’s her and Samara and Jacob, and Jack standing a little farther away than she should. Four biotics—four!—and is this truly necessary?

She decides not to question it when a particularly large and ill-tempered group of krogan comes at them with shotguns. Then, it’s all screaming and bones cracking and blue waves of energy, and it’s over before it even started, really. Miranda makes quick work of a few vorcha shrieking profanities, and Jack takes the last krogan down herself, throwing out her arms, and Miranda watches the way she twists at the waist, the flash of glorious color when she closes her fists and pulls. And Jack knows she’s looking, because Miranda has figured this much out and it is now part of a somewhat delicate plan that may or may not work.

A plan. To speak to Jack. Maybe she went mad long ago.

“Lot of them, huh?” Jacob is reloading his gun and looking over his shoulder. “Hope Shepard’s got plenty of clips.”

She’s about to say that Shepard doesn’t need thermal clips because the whole damn universe just seems to bend to her will when she catches Jack looking. Really, really _looking_ , not sneering or doing that furtive sidelong kind-of-sort-of looking thing. It’s unguarded and thoughtful, guileless, as calm as she’s ever seen the woman, and Miranda doesn’t remember the last time someone looked at her like that. Like they were trying to figure something out, or they thought she had some sort of answer for life or the universe or—worse— _themselves_ —that they’d find if they just stared long enough. Maybe Shepard.

She’s not sure how to feel about that.

They keep watch for any stragglers, and Jack takes a stroll through the carnage every so often, probably just to watch them bleed, until Shepard comes back and tells them they can finally, blessedly get off this planet. On the way out, Samara falls into step beside her, an endless ocean of agelessness.

“You work well together,” she says, and Miranda probably shouldn’t be so taken aback, because Samara sees everything, even the things people would rather she not ( _especially_ the things people would rather she not), but Miranda is just a little stunned. She doesn’t know what to say, and she doesn’t have to, because Samara’s words flow together like tides. “I believe it is a good thing for you both.”

“Are we still talking about work?” She cocks her head, and Samara’s face is still that serene mask of grace and tranquility but for the smallest twitch of lips that she washes away as quickly as it comes.

“You should tread lightly,” and her voice is so, so _soft_ , “but that does not mean you should fear to tread at all.”

“Did the ancient justicars say that?” Because it sounds like something they would say.

“No,” Samara admits, and now she is certainly smiling. “ _I_ said that. And I’ve had a thousand years to learn it, in case you have forgotten.”

Miranda chews that over with dinner, during which Jack is conspicuously absent, and tweaks her plans.

* * *

It’s midnight, again, and she is in the kitchen, again, and she’s waiting—not _eagerly_ —for the hiss of the elevator door. Because Miranda is fairly certain that something is about to happen, is so certain, in fact, that she has set out two wine glasses and hasn’t even uncorked the bottle of cabernet sitting on the table. Jack will make her late-night rounds on the crew deck, and Miranda will invite her to have a drink. And they will talk, and it may be awkward or it may not be, and she will say the things that need to be said. And she will _listen_. And maybe they will even do this again.

She has it planned out, this time.

She doesn’t have to wait for much longer for the elevator door to hiss open, and she hears the clunky boots she’s come to recognize by the particular timbre of the thick heel scuffing the floor, and then there’s Jack, standing in the half-light of the kitchen, blinking, and not looking nearly as surprised as Miranda thinks she ought.

In fact, she _smirks_.

“Waiting on me, princess?” She grabs the bottle and searches the label, probably looking for the alcohol content. Typical. “You’ll have to work a little harder than that if you want to get me out of my clothes.”

Miranda bristles. But it’s not a _bad_ sort of bristle, not really. “Pretend it’s batarian brandy,” she offers, and Jack sits down across from her, no poking or prodding necessary.

“Then maybe we’d get somewhere.”

She can’t really argue with that, other than to say batarian liquor tastes like three-day-old dishwater with an exceedingly unpleasant aftertaste of matchsticks, but. This is progress. And this is Jack, and this is her, and this can all be undone with a wayward look or the wrong choice of adjectives, and Miranda is nothing if not restrained. Most of the time.

For a while, they just drink. And they aren’t so much furtively glancing anymore as they are brazenly looking, and it’s quiet but it’s a good sort of quiet, and Miranda is truly reluctant to break it.

“I…” She begins, and this worked out in her head a few hours ago, really. She takes another drink. Bandages, ripping, tearing. Yes. “I never thanked you for helping me back on Illium. With my sister.” Jack doesn’t say anything, just stares and drinks, so she soldiers on. “I—I could not have done it without you. And I appreciate it, truly. More than I can say.” _There_. One down.

Jack blinks, and her gaze shifts to something off to Miranda’s side before snapping right back up again. “No problem,” she sneers, and has she already finished her glass? How has she already finished her glass?

“Damn it, if you’re going to drink my wine, do it properly,” Miranda says, without bite. She pours Jack another—smaller—glass. “Small sips, so you actually _taste_ it. You do know how to do that, don’t you?”

She tells Jack how to taste the different notes, explains how to let it linger on your tongue and inhale _just so_ , which makes Jack wrinkle her nose and snort and this wasn’t part of the plan at all, but Miranda doesn’t care. By the third glass, she thinks she’s even making progress.

“Cherries,” Jack says, _finally_ , and if Miranda didn’t know better she’d say she was positively triumphant. “Cherries and fucking… berries.”

“Currants,” and now it’s Miranda’s turn to smirk, and when did she start keeping track of who got to do what? “They’re blackcurrants.”

“What the hell are those,” she doesn’t-ask, and Miranda feels warm and slightly drunk and, and—well, happy. She feels happy. She is sharing an exquisite bottle of wine with someone who has never heard of cabernet sauvignon or blackcurrants before, who helped keep her sister safe and doesn’t take what she doesn’t offer and pulls off a shaved head better than any man or woman she’s ever known. This, too, is unfamiliar territory, but not the unpleasant sort. This is good, easy. This is something she could get used to. This is something, she thinks, she might _want_ to get used to.

“You talk to her?” Jack asks after Miranda tops off her glass again. “Your sister.”

This is something she has shared with no one but Shepard, and even then, only in passing. Oriana is hers, something wholly good and warm and precious, and she is not sure it’s something she’s comfortable speaking of just yet. Miranda would kill without hesitation for Oriana, and has. She would fight a horde of krogan with her bare hands and storm Cerberus’ headquarters all on her own just to keep her sister safe and happy. It is a delicate thing she nurtures like a bullet to her gun, and anyone who tries to take it from her will meet a very swift and unpleasant end.

But, Jack. Jack is here and she is listening and she might be slightly drunk but this is something they shared. This is something between them.

“I do,” she says, a little tentative. “She’s—amazing,” Miranda concedes, and stops herself from rambling further. Jack probably doesn’t care. “I never thought I would know her.”

Jack takes a long, hard drink, probably just because she knows it irritates Miranda. “Good. That’s good.”

Well.

“Jack,” she starts again, and it is probably the wine, or—rather, it is simply the wine making things a little easier. Probably. “I’m… I’m not good at,” she swallows, because this is _her_ , this is Miranda Lawson, the person, the woman, the thing she seals off behind layers of brick and mortar because how could she ever trust anyone else with this? You could never truly know another person. You can only ever trust yourself. _Do not attach yourself to anything. Do not hope for someone to understand you, to save you, to need you_.

There is a chance, perhaps a bigger one than she thinks, that Jack will throw this back in her face and tell her to fuck off or explain very loudly just what a bitch she is or whatever manner of profanity she’s favoring tonight, and if that’s the case, it’s a good thing she’s got more wine. A very good thing.

“I’m not used to being wrong.” And there it is. Another bandage, another piece of skin. “And I have been wrong.” About Shepard, about Cerberus, about the geth perched in the AI core, about _you_.

Jack doesn’t look vindictive, or even particularly surprised. She takes another drink, meets Miranda’s eyes, and there’s this _look_ that Miranda has never seen on her before, not sympathetic or apologetic, but understanding, really, truly _understanding_ , like she knows just what has come to pass between them and she’s been waiting on it for a while now. She looks as tired as Miranda feels, and maybe even a little smug.

“I know,” Jack says. And, a bit quieter, “So have I. A little.” And that, really, is all of it.


	2. Chapter 2

They do it again. A week later, in fact.

She isn’t expecting Jack, not really, and she’s _definitely_ not hoping she’ll show up or anything (she’s not, really _really_ ), but when she saunters up to the crew deck after everyone with sense has gone to bed, Miranda pours her a glass and tells her to have a seat. She might even smile, a little.

“This tastes like grass. You like this?”

“Give it to me if you don’t. I understand if it’s too delicate for your mouth.”

“Fuck you, cheerleader.” She takes a long drink that makes her screw up her face and wrinkle her nose. “What the hell is this?”

“Sauvignon blanc.” Miranda takes a tiny, appropriate sip. “Don’t like it, do you.”

“I can’t decide.” She takes another drink, smaller this time, like she actually remembered from the last time they did this.

Miranda smirks at her. Sauvignon blanc is something of an acquired taste, which is usually just code for this-is-not-good-but-I’ve-convinced-myself-I-like-it, like those gingerbread cookies with the apricot filling they used to sell around Christmas back home, but Miranda has always been fond of it. It’s a little like champagne, without the bubbles:  cold, crisp, sharp, not even a hint of sweetness. It’s Miranda’s favorite, and Jack’s still trying to figure it out midway through her second glass.

“It’s lime, isn’t it?” Miranda nods. “Who the fuck wants to taste lime or _wood_ in their wine?”

“People with better taste than you.”

Jack makes a noise somewhere between irritation and possibly amusement, and Miranda decides that she might buy some more (and some chardonnay and maybe some pinot noir) when she has the chance. Especially if they’re going to be making a habit of this, and it’s looking like maybe, just maybe, they are.

“Don’t you ever just want something easy?”

“By ‘easy’ you mean cheap beer that tastes like cat piss.” She takes another sip. No, she does not like _easy_. “I don’t drink trash.”

“No, you drink shit that tastes like grass and tree bark.”

There _are_ notes of citrus and boxwood, and it is a bit grassy, but Miranda loves the fresh, elegant taste of it. It’s a multifaceted thing, perfect for when you want something to think on. “It’s complicated. I like complicated.”

Jack makes a face at that. “Aren’t you just _special_.”

“I’m glad you’ve finally noticed.”

“I’ve noticed something, but it’s sure as hell not that.”

“Yes. I can feel your eyes trailing after me like a puppy. A leering puppy.”

“You’re the one who ogles me, don’t even fucking act like it’s the other way around.”

“I’m very aware I have a fantastic backside, Jack. I’m also very aware that it draws your eyes like a fly to honey.” See, _she_ can do this too.

“If you know it, why don’t you do something? Pussy.”

“Oh, shove it.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

She opens her mouth for a snappy retort and realizes that she’s flirting. Shamelessly. With Jack. Again.

This is a thing. And she likes it.

“I don’t hear you denying it.”

“Drink your wine, convict.” Miranda takes a good, long sip of hers. This isn’t enough to get her drunk but she thinks she wants to be, right now.

Jack blinks, then frowns, then laughs, and Miranda really, really likes it when she laughs like that, full and heavy and _real_. She’s not about to say it, though. No. “What the fuck did you just call me?”

“Convict. You do know what it means, don’t you?” She smiles when Jack makes that noise again. “You’re so fond of pet names, I thought I should give you one of your own.”

“And that’s the best you could come up with, princess?”

“It suits you. Convict.” Jack laughs again, a short burst of color, and Miranda closes her eyes and _loves_ , a little, the moment and the wine and the laughter and Jack. Yes, _Jack_.

Neither one of them says much for a while; they sit, and they drink, and Jack makes faces that range from vaguely disgusted to thoughtful to dismissive, and Miranda feels well and truly relaxed. With Jack. That they’ve come this far is a miracle; that she _likes_ it is… well, that’s something else. They keep doing that thing where they steal glances at each other, every so often. Jack arches her back and stretches and Miranda can see the tattoos creeping up the sides of her neck. She likes that, too.

Suddenly, Jack shifts, balls her hand into a fist next to her glass. “Thanks.” She bites it out, leaves it like a scrap for Miranda to take from across the table. It’s a sharp thing, wrapped in barbed wire and fraught with bits of glass, but Miranda is learning the ins and outs of these things, how to extract the important bits from the mangled mess, and she thinks she knows what to do with this.

She pours Jack another glass and just says, “Anytime.” She meets her eyes and she means it. She does.

By the time they finish the bottle, it’s a quarter to two and neither of them are tired, but Jack stretches and twists her neck and Miranda knows she’ll be leaving now and she also knows they’ll do this again. It’s not even a hunch; she just _knows_.

“Shit, I really don’t like this.”

Miranda scoffs. “And it took you three glasses to realize that?” Jack looks her up and down and how many times has she done that, now?

“Sure did, cheerleader.” Her hand brushes Miranda’s shoulder on the way back to the elevator.

* * *

She meets Oriana at a slow Nos Astra space port two days later. She shows up an hour early, because she is _punctual_ and because this is Oriana, and she will not have her sister waiting on her.

She is also incredibly nervous. More so than when they took off for the Collector base.

When Oriana arrives and spots her, she smiles that wide, toothy-white smile that is so unlike Miranda’s and hugs her so tight that she forgets any word of greeting she’s been rehearsing for the last forty-five minutes. It’s the first time they’ve actually seen each other in person since Miranda introduced herself and it feels like half a damned lifetime.

“I missed you so much!” Oriana is still hugging her, face pressed against her shoulder. “It’s like I’ve got nineteen years to catch up on and we’re a billion light years apart.”

Miranda blinks, and hugs her tighter. She is so _warm_ , and she is the brightest thing in Miranda’s whole life.

Everyone should have a sister. _Everyone_.

They go to the new Blasto movie and laugh the whole way through because nothing has ever been so ridiculous, and Miranda has never even _seen_ a Blasto movie before, but she would sit through the entire catalogue of these stupid things just to share candy and laugh with Oriana. Then there’s some shopping and some sight-seeing and she buys Oriana a bottle of perfume that came all the way from France, even though she protests. _I would buy you this whole damn port_ , she wants to say. _I’d fly to Tuchanka to find you a bit of radioactive rubble you wanted_.

Dinner is at a nice asari-run place overlooking a lake. They talk about school and space and colony development and Oriana drops little hints about a very cute boy in her history class that makes Miranda’s stomach clench, not really in a bad way, but more of a tense, I-will-kill-him-if-he-hurts-you-and-I-will-not-regret-it sort of way.

“How do you,” Oriana starts, idly poking her salad, “how do you make someone notice? You know.”

And here is some _truly_ unfamiliar territory. Her little sister, asking her for advice. About boys. About having a crush on someone. It is simultaneously blissful and horrifying.

“Well, does he—” No. That’s bad. “Is he—”

No. This is not about _him_.

“You are an amazing person, Oriana. You’re incredibly intelligent and you’re beautiful and you’re funny and you play violin better than anyone. You’re just—you’re Oriana, and you’re wonderful.” More than wonderful. “You’re _you_ , and you’re the most fantastic thing in the galaxy. He will see that, in time.” And then, “If he doesn’t, let me know and I’ll take care of him.”

“And you think you’re not funny.”

“I’m serious, Ori.”

“I know.” Oriana’s eyes are so, so achingly bright. “I love you, Miranda.”

She works really, really hard not to cry onto her plate.

Saying goodbye in person is even more difficult than it is over an extranet connection. They hug, again, and when Oriana tells her that she loves her lots and can’t wait to see her again, Miranda says, “I love you, too,” and spends the elevator ride up to her shuttle wiping tears from her face and not giving a damn that her mascara has run. This thing is hers and she will keep it, will face down an entire Reaper fleet to protect it, if she must.

Back on the Normandy, she sits with Samara in starboard observation for a bit, just watching the stars and the great empty space in between. Somewhere in this strange, incomprehensible thing, there is someone she loves so much she would give her life ten thousand times over, let the eagle peck out her liver every night for eternity, or however that goes. Someone she loves, and someone who loves her, too, and for some reason, everything makes sense. Maybe this is why Samara spends so much time in here.

“It’s all so bloody beautiful,” she says, and Samara hums in agreement, presses a hand against her shoulder, and yes, the universe is bloody _gorgeous_.

* * *

“Six for me and none for you,” Jack cackles, and oh, that’s just _it_.

Miranda got word that the Blue Suns were getting their filth all over Ontarom, and that someone would be so terribly grateful if someone _else_ would take care of the problem, nudge nudge, wink wink, and so they’d set off to resolve the matter quickly and humanely. Normandy Pest and Rodent control, the pilot had said, and for once Miranda didn’t want to backhand him.

But. That was then and this is now, and someone could definitely do with a little backhanding. Or something.

Jack just took out a small group of, indeed, six, all by herself while Miranda was fiddling with the door and she has never, ever seen someone look so damn insufferable. And she would know; she herself can be insufferable, and she likes to think she’s very good at it. Shepard had decided—again—that she and Jack ought to work together, so here they are, working their way through a decrepit complex and thinning them out where they can. Which has been easy work, split evenly between the two of them, until about twelve seconds ago.

“You did that on _purpose_.”

“Maybe you should pay more attention to things that aren’t my ass and you’d see them coming.”

The _nerve_! And, as if on cue, she can feel her eyes wandering down and—no, that’s exactly what she wants. “I know it _pains_ you, but I was occupied with other things. If you’re looking for someone to leer at you, perhaps Shepard could send Massani next time.”

This, of course, does not deter her.

“Other things,” Jack draws out, and she turns around and it’s everything Miranda can do to keep her eyes from roaming down Jack’s neck and her clavicle and her barely covered breasts and—and—what is even going on, here? What has been going on for months, now?

“Yes. Other things. Other things that weren’t you.”

Jack snorts rather indelicately, and Miranda can tell she’s very amused by this underneath the sneer and the serrated edges of her voice. She’s gotten quite good at reading Jack’s face, her voice, her eyes; when she thinks something is funny, her mouth twists off to one side; when she is happy, or as happy as Jack ever is, she holds her head high and rolls her shoulders back; when she is confused, or upset, she narrows her eyes and presses her lips into a thin, sharp line. It’s a delicate thing, almost imperceptible at times thanks in no small part to Jack’s permanent scowl, but Miranda knows it fairly well. Probably better than anyone else, really, and that thought sends an odd thrill of _something_ through her belly.

Her reverie is interrupted by a large and horribly unattractive group of Blue Suns. For a single, awful moment, she thinks they’re outnumbered and probably in for a rough time of it. But then, she remembers who she’s with, and the things they can do between them, and she almost feels sorry for the poor bastards.

It’s quick work, really. Jack knocks them off their feet, Miranda slams them into the ceiling, and it’s just a little beautiful. They fall into an easy rhythm, knocking heads together, pushing them back, practically reveling in it, and when it’s done, they’re both sweaty and panting and a little exhausted and _wow_ , that was actually fun.

“Impressive,” Miranda says, surveying the damage. And then she turns around, and Jack is grinning and it’s _beautiful_.

“That’s all you’ve got to say, you Cerberus pussy?” Coming from her, it almost sounds like endearment. But.

“Shut your mouth, convict.”

“You like it open.”

“Are you coming on to me?” She asks, peach-sweet, because she is battle-drunk and she cannot stop herself. Probably. “Behave yourself, and I might let you lick the soles of my boots.”

Jack laughs then, a real, rich laugh, and leans back against the wall, back arched just so. “ _Make_ me,” she snarls, low, and she’s sweaty and violent and God, but she is _beautiful_ , Miranda can see the tattoos decorating her neck and her head is tilted up, mouth quirked at the corners, inviting Miranda in, and—and—

“Wow, you guys did this? All on your own?”

Shepard. Shepard and Jacob and Kasumi, who is looking from Jack to Miranda and back again and probably has exactly the right idea. They turn away from each other like children who have just been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

“Damn,” Jacob adds. And then they all leave, and Miranda sits at her computer and cannot work and cannot think because _Jack_ and Jack’s tattoos and Jack’s damned voice, and because this is the second time Shepard has interrupted something now and she feels confident it will not be the last, and she doesn’t know how to make it happen again.

And Miranda knows, with certainty, that she wants it to happen again.

* * *

In theory, Commander Shepard is the best damn soldier in the galaxy, a woman who has seen and done things most people typically only hear about in cheap sci-fi novels and film. She is a force unto herself, shouldering the weight of entire civilizations and defying all laws of _everything_ to protect their corner of the universe from the savage cosmic claws that threaten to wrench them from their axis and into oblivion. She is unmovable, unbreakable, constant. A regular Atlas, with a great head of hair.

In practice, Commander Shepard is a woman much like any other.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about her, physically speaking, unless you’re talking about all the cybernetics or the hair that Miranda is just a little jealous of. She laughs a lot. More than you’d think. She likes chamomile tea, polishes her toenails, pines like a milkmaid over Dr. T’soni and files all her reports at the last possible minute.

She is also full of fire. It spills out of her, sometimes, whether in the heat of battle or when she’s pouring a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and you can feel it in your bones. It changes you. It makes you think impossible things, makes you do impossible things, because Shepard believes—Shepard _knows_ —you can, and together, you will move the whole damn galaxy.

It also makes you question things. Mostly, yourself. Namely, your thoughts, feelings, motivations, loyalties, and, occasionally, your choice of formal attire.

Miranda watches her, feeding her fish in the captain’s cabin while she gives her the itinerary for the next three days. She doesn’t seem to be listening closely, but she is. She always is, and Miranda knows it well.

“Slavers and a trip to Asteria.” She taps the side of the tank, and, as if not wanting to disappoint her, the sunfish swims up to the top to eat. “Fun.”

Routing slavers is, indeed, great fun and immensely satisfying work. She is just thinking, in fact, that she should go tell Samara the good news when Shepard stretches and says, “So. You and Jack.”

Oh. Well. That.

“Jack and I, what? Killed two dozen mercs? Didn’t murder each other?” It’s defensive and she knows it, but this is very nearly Oriana territory. It is hers, and Jack’s too, barely beyond its infancy, and it is difficult for her to speak of these things without her _feelings_ bubbling to the surface, those prickly, messy things that people will use or exploit or worse.

But. This is Shepard, and that makes everything all right.

Shepard just gives her that insufferable This-is-my-ship-and-I-know-all look, accompanied by something vaguely resembling amusement. “You and Jack. You know what I mean.”

And, okay. Maybe she does. “We are civil to each other. What about it? I thought that was what you wanted?”

“Miranda.”

“Commander?”

“Looks to me like you’re a little more than civil.” A lesser woman would have blushed all the way down to the tips of her toes. Miranda does not. “Unless I’m very, very wrong.”

She shifts. Shepard watches. And damn it, she already _knows_. “You’re not wrong.” But. “You’re not entirely right, either.”

“Oh?” That quirked eyebrow, and _how_ does she do that, just so? “Because it definitely looked like something.”

“Are you going to lecture me on fraternization? I’m not Alliance.” And she damn well never will be.

Shepard looks like she’s giving that some thought—it wouldn’t be the first time she suggested Miranda might be good for the Alliance, and it wouldn’t be the first time she got told otherwise—but, in the end, she just smiles that old, familiar smile and looks at Miranda in a way that makes her think she knows more about what this is and what’s been going on than Miranda knows herself. “Just try not to break anything. Repairs aren’t cheap, and I don’t think Cerberus is going to be doing us any favors again.”

“Hilarious. Original, too.”

“I try.”

She’s halfway out the door to finish up some calls when Shepard stops her, this time with a hand on her arm. She looks serious, Miranda knows she’s serious, so she stands at full attention. Like a good little soldier. If she had seen this three years ago, she’d have retched. And yet.

“You’re the only thing that’s been keeping this ship going. You know that, right?”

“Commander?”

“You’ve gotten us these jobs, gotten supplies, money, got people’s attention. I don’t really know how you’ve done this, but you keep doing it, and it’s pretty incredible. There’s only so much I can do.” Miranda wants to say, _No, you can do everything I do and then some_ , but Shepard looks quite stern for a woman paying her a compliment, so she doesn’t. “Thank you. For everything you’ve ever done and ever will do. Thank you.”

And there it is. She can’t tell if it’s the look in Shepard’s eyes, or the tone of her voice, the feeling of her hand on Miranda’s arm, but she stands up a little straighter, sets her jaw and gives Shepard a smile and a salute. “It’s nothing, Commander,” she says, and truly, she feels it.

There is fire in Shepard, a thing that courses through her veins and sustains her and everyone around her, and it is something Miranda has never had and has come to realize she never will. She does not have that singular devotion, the ability to inspire with a touch, to shape another’s fortune with the lilt of her voice and the arch of her brow. She does not. She is Miranda Lawson and there is not fire in her blood, but she knows herself, she knows what she wants, and there is nothing she cannot conquer.

* * *

There’s a loud knock on her cabin door, then another, and another, and _another_ , and who the hell does Shepard think she—

“Holy shit. I’ve stayed in places smaller than your _bed_.”

Jack is standing in the middle of her room holding a bottle of something dark and undoubtedly strong, and for a few very long seconds, Miranda forgets how to breathe.

Jack is here. In her room. Of her own accord. With a bottle of what appears to be very, very fine whiskey.

Oh.

“And you think I haven’t.”

She opens the bottle, and why does she already have two glasses with her? Did she plan this? Miranda certainly didn’t. “I don’t know. Have you?”

Miranda bristles, but it’s that sort-of-pleasant bristle that Jack and Jack alone seems to drag out of her. Which seems to be happening a lot, these days. “In fact, I have. I can’t help it that I have good taste.”

“That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit that’s ever come out of your mouth.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“And you’re still delusional.”

“Jealous _and_ snide. Truly, this is my lucky night.”

She is, though, almost ashamed of the opulence of her cabin. Almost, because Jack sits down in one of the chairs at the window and she _relaxes_ , rests her head and takes a drink, and in this moment she’s never been so glad for Cerberus’ fondness of all things white, leather and decadent. Not that she’d say it, or anything.

She has a seat and takes a drink, and she’s never been much for whiskey, but this stuff is _good_ , smooth, and she’s about to ask where it came from when Jack leans back and puts her feet—graceless boots and all—up on the table and gives her that _look_ that just screams, _Do something about it_.

“Your boots are filthy, convict. Don’t you know how to clean those things?”

“Am I getting mud on your precious Cerberus furniture? Shit, I’m _so_ sorry.”

“Such a refined thing. Such a dainty little petal.”

“Such a bitch.”

And for some reason, they’re both smiling. Miranda is sitting in her cabin with Jack and a bottle of the best whiskey she’s ever had and there’s mud on her table and she’s _smiling_ and it’s all kind of bloody fantastic. She doesn’t have a plan for this—why would she?—but it just feels good. This is good. There is no plan, there is no certainty to this whole thing, and it’s _good_.

They talk about Shepard, and work, and how much Ken doesn’t deserve Gabby, and how much they both hate mercs, and whether or not Kasumi has slept with that salarian Spectre she swears is trying to arrest her and who she just won’t shut up about. Midway through a small second glass, the topic turns to biotics and how amazing Jack has decided she was on Ontarom last week. _Deadly_ and _murderous_ and _fucking unstoppable_ , she says, and it makes Miranda laugh.

“Those are some _big_ words, convict. Have you been reading?” She’s not drunk, because it takes a lot more than a few mouthfuls of whiskey to get Miranda drunk, but the way Jack is grinning at her, lopsided and sharp and those _eyes_ , well, it’s enough to make her slightly dizzy.

“Gorgeous, too. Don’t act like you don’t know it.” She takes a long drink and Miranda watches her throat bob when she swallows, smooth skin and ink and yes, she is definitely doing this on purpose, and at this point Miranda is accustomed enough not to care and curious enough to want it.

“And when did I ever say that?”

“You think I’m hot,” Jack drawls, arching her back just slightly off the chair, and Miranda can see the muscle shifting over bone and suddenly her mouth has gone a little dry. “Don’t you, princess.”

“I think you’re _something_. Not sure it’s hot.”

“Something hot.” Her mouth is a wide, wicked gash, and Miranda wants to devour it. This is quickly turning into Ontarom, Part II, and there’s no one around to interrupt it this time.

“You shouldn’t flatter yourself so. It’s unseemly.” Jack gets up then, glass in hand, and stands right in front of her and Miranda forgets how to breathe, how to swallow, how to _everything_ , because Jack is tangling her fingers in her hair—and it hurts just a little but it’s _right_ —and forcing her head up to look into her eyes. _Oh_.

“You’re so bad at this. If you want something, fucking _take_ it.” Jack is sneering and looks like she’s about to say something else snide and petulant when Miranda surges up out of her chair, backs her into the wall and kisses her.

She’s pretty sure she’s never kissed anyone like this before. It’s hard and hot and full of teeth, and Jack digs her nails into Miranda’s hip; she tastes like booze and it’s  _incredible_. Jack’s dropped her glass onto the floor, it’s going to stain the carpet and six months ago Miranda would have killed her for it but now she just thinks it’s a little funny.

“Look how fast the princess falls,” Jack hisses, and now she’s the one pushing Miranda back, back, back until they both tumble into a pile of limbs and teeth and jagged edges on the bed. She shoves her knee up, grinding it between Miranda’s thighs, and Miranda grabs her hips and arches up against her; the friction is like a shock through her blood, and she squeezes her eyes shut, clenches her jaw to keep anything too embarrassing from working its way out.

Are they doing this? They are really doing this. Her door is shut and there’s no Shepard in sight and she’s got a lap full of Jack, who has teeth on her neck and hands tangled hard in her hair.

Yes. They’re really doing this.

When Jack pulls back, Miranda is already breathless and flushed and feeling a little bereft because Jack’s hands aren’t in her hair anymore and she’s not touching her, _why isn’t she touching her_ , but then Jack reaches up and undoes the weird strap… things at her shoulders, lets them fall to her hips, and yes, indeed, those tattoos _do_ cover a lot of ground. All of it, in fact. She’s just started on her pants when Miranda breaks out of her latest Jack-induced trance and stills her hands.

“Let me.”

And Jack does.

Miranda unbuckles her belt, then pushes her pants (how many pairs of these ugly things does she have?) down her hips, and Jack takes her hands and presses them up her sides, along the hard planes of her stomach and the swell of her breasts, shuddering beneath her palms and arching into her touch. She presses her lips into Jack’s skin, drags her tongue up her neck and Jack growls, actually _growls_ and grinds the heel of her palm into Miranda’s crotch. It feels absolutely fucking incredible, and when Jack does it again, Miranda lets her head fall back and _moans_.

It takes a few minutes between the teeth at her neck and the hand between her legs, but she manages to get Jack’s pants mostly off when she finds that she’s still wearing her boots. Of course. Because Jack couldn’t settle for whiskey on her floor and mud on the table, she has to track on her white sheets, too.

“Get these off or I swear,” she starts.

“Gonna kick me out, cheerleader?”

No. No, she is not. Jack is not going anywhere, not now, and to make sure of it—or, at least she kind of silently prays for it—Miranda sits up and undoes the clasp of her suit and slips it down her shoulders like shedding skin, unclasps her bra and tosses it on the floor; Jack just stares and stares, looking at her with this absolute voraciousness Miranda quickly decides she likes. Jack, the viper, entranced. Like she’s a snake charmer.

“Do you know how bad I wanted to fuck you on Ontarom,” she snaps, and whatever smart remark Miranda might have thought dies in her throat when Jack pushes her down again and slides her hands down Miranda’s hips, mouth on her jaw. Miranda isn’t sure how she’s doing that thing with her tongue but she’s damn well going to learn.

And then Jack is holding her hips down and meeting her eyes from between Miranda’s legs, and—oh. That’s quite the view. Not that she has much time to admire it, because then Jack leans in, flicks her tongue out, and every one of Miranda’s nerves begs for more.

Pretty soon, she forgets how to do anything at all but whimper and arch and babble nonsense as Jack digs her fingernails in, the strong, sweet strokes of her tongue driving Miranda’s hips into their own rhythm. Her thumbs move in circles over her hip bones, and she laughs— _laughs_ —when Miranda’s fingers find the side of her face, rocking into her mouth. She flicks her tongue faster, and faster, and then it’s _too_ fast and— _oh, oh_ —Miranda comes, pleasure spilling over her like waves, Jack’s mouth open on the seizing muscles of her belly and her hands squeezing the curve of her ass. Her toes curl and something stupid comes out of her mouth, she’s not sure what, and then it’s just heavy breathing and sweat and _Jack_.

She’s shaky with just about everything, hands and legs and all of it, but she still manages to flip Jack over and find her mouth, tasting herself on her tongue as she drags her fingers down Jack’s side. She shivers, groans into Miranda’s mouth when she runs her knuckles up her ribs and Miranda tucks that it away for future use. She likes this. She also likes it when Miranda leans over her and slides her hand underneath Jack’s thigh, traces figure-eights where her leg meets her hip. Two fingers inside, and Jack moans out like a siren.

She twists up against her, and Miranda slows down; Jack is _loud_ , the things spilling out of her mouth are utterly obscene, and Miranda goads her on and _on_ , speeding up and slowing down and running her tongue between Jack’s breasts, taking a nipple into her mouth and running a finger over her clit until she whimpers something broken and unintelligible. She changes her rhythm, faster, erratic, and Jack finally arches up against her and makes a small, choked noise as Miranda’s fingers take her though it, teeth playing at her ear.

She collapses. Jack collapses. And the only thing Miranda can think is, _I can’t believe I didn’t do that sooner_.

There was no plan for this, no bit of her schedule devoted to screwing Jack until they were both sated and drunk with it, and yet. There’s whiskey on her floor, mud on her table, clothes littering her floor and a beautiful, vicious woman crawling under her blankets and punching her pillow. No plan, but _something_. Something good.

“Fuck,” Jack says, shaky, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Miranda agrees.

Jack stays. She doesn’t curl around Miranda, and there’s nothing resembling cuddling, not really, probably because that would be too _proper_ , but she does allow Miranda to trace her tattoos in the dark, even brushes her lips and teeth against her fingers, once or twice. Her profile is a hard, rigid line, shoulders like stone, and when Miranda closes her eyes she can feel the even flow of her breathing.

It is beautiful.

Jack is the undercity. Jack is concrete, asphalt, snarling dogs at the gate. Jack is _certainty_ , she is the violence of a river current, the cold clasp of gun metal, and Miranda isn’t sure how she missed it for so long.

* * *

She leaves little invitations for Jack around the ship. A door left unlocked until late, the brush of an elbow, a hint of _want_. Sometimes, Jack takes them; sometimes, she doesn’t.

On the occasions that she does, Miranda drops her plans, her schedules, her calls and angry messages and lets herself be swept under the great tide of monstrosity and concrete elegance that is Jack. They trade insults like petty teenage girls in a high school bathroom, fall in and out of bed all night, and Miranda continues teaching her to drink wine like a civilized person ought. She’s not sure she’s ever spent so much time with another person before, not another officer, not a lover, and she’s definitely never been so eager for night to fall, to kiss someone, to slide her hands up and down and commit every scar, every tattoo, every bit of skin to memory and then learn it all over again like it’s the first time.

There is always something new, something surprising, and it’s never enough but it _is_.

“You’re halfway sophisticated, aren’t you,” she teases while Jack finishes up a glass of chardonnay. They’re lying in Miranda’s bed with a baguette, some very sharp cheese, glasses of wine balanced between their fingers and not a scrap of clothing in sight. They’re getting crumbs on the sheets and Miranda couldn’t care less if she tried. “Just clean up that mouth of yours and you’ll be downright presentable.”

“Bite me.”

Well.

Miranda’s hair is damp and clinging to her temples by the time they’re finished, and Jack allows herself to be held, just a little, head on Miranda’s shoulder and fingers spread wide on her thigh. She traces a finger along the arch of Jack’s head and notices she still seems to be torn between letting her hair grow out and not, tiny little strands like stubble poking out along her skin. She tries to imagine what Jack might look like with hair and can’t, quite, but she does know it would look good. Jack is beautiful. There’s not much she can do about that.

“You don’t really want me to clean up my mouth.” She smirks into Miranda’s neck and tightens her fingers. “You fucking _love_ it.”

Indeed, she does, and it’s something Jack noticed and exploited very quickly. She hisses vulgarities in her ear during their missions, in the elevator, up against the wall of her room, letting Miranda know how hard she’s going to fuck her and how much Miranda is going to like it, and it makes her ache for the feel of Jack’s harsh curves and contours to set herself against. She would not trade the promise-threats and fork-tongued obscenity for all the honeyed words in the galaxy, and Jack knows it. Sweetness only gets you so far with Miranda. Sharp teeth and angular conviction, that’s what makes her blood pound.

“I do love it when you tell me about my breasts. It’s like the poetry of a fumbling fifteen-year-old.”

Jack just snorts and finishes the wine that’s gone warm now, and they sit like that for a while, feet tangled together and lethargic and still a little damp, when Jack sets her chin on Miranda’s shoulder and looks _thoughtful_ , of all things. And the difference between Jack being thoughtful and Jack looking murderous and Jack who’s had enough of your shit or even Jack who is about to back you into the wall and tear your clothes off is sort of a subtle thing, sublime, but Miranda has it down to an art and she is inordinately proud of it.

“You decided anything, yet?”

She hasn’t. Between fighting and fucking and talking and all the spaces in between she fills with a galaxy full of contacts and favors and reporting to Shepard like a tagged and collard Alliance dog, she still hasn’t given it much thought.

“No. I suppose you have?”

Jack tangles her fingers in her hair and shuts her eyes, shifting to fit herself into Miranda’s side. “Nah. I’ll figure it out when I have to.” In that, she is certain, and Miranda envies her ability to simultaneously not give a fuck and also know that she’ll get where she needs to be in the end.

“All else fails, we could be pirates.”

“Are you proposing? Should I beg Shepard to let me have your hand?”

“Shepard doesn’t even know.” Teeth on her shoulder, and then a tongue to soothe.

Miranda just laughs, because nothing ever goes through the Normandy without Shepard getting wind of it one way or another. Probably EDI. Or, probably, Shepard is so in tune with her crew she can also tell what they are doing and who and when, which is a disturbing thought but probably not far from the truth. “Like hell she doesn’t. She’s known since Ontarom.”

Jack looks—not surprised, but wary. Like she should have known, because it’s _Shepard_ , but she also might have wanted to keep it to herself, something just between the two of them. Jack, possessive. It is both beguiling and hilarious.

“God, Miranda. And I bet you couldn’t keep your mouth shut about my ass, could you, you fucking letch.”

“I was not looking at your ass on Ontarom.” Not that time, at least. And then she realizes what has just happened, and were it not for the dark, Jack would be mocking her mercilessly for her slight blush and the widening of her eyes. “I believe that’s the first time you’ve ever used my name.”

“Big fucking deal.” Jack yawns, and then she’s asleep against Miranda’s shoulder. From her bed, she can see the sea of stars out the window, and for the first time, she knows that everything will be all right even if she doesn’t have a clue right now.

* * *

Jacob uses his biotics and his shotgun in tandem in a way Miranda has never learned and really never needed. It’s a quick thing, fluid and graceful, as strong and sure as Jacob himself. He’s found a place on the Normandy, carved himself a spot at Shepard’s side, and for once, Miranda knows, he feels like he really belongs somewhere. He’s not dogged by Cerberus’ reputation and their now-obvious (rather, _more_ obvious) depravity, and he’s not tied down with Alliance red tape. He’s simply Jacob Taylor, just a man who does good work, who does his best and gives when it is asked of him, and that’s enough.

It bothers her, more than she’d admit (because she doesn’t admit to much), that this is all going to end soon and Jacob is probably going to be as lost as he’s ever been. He has vague ideas of going back to the Alliance, but they both know he can’t and won’t. More likely, he’ll wind up someplace warm back on Earth, trying to figure things out. Again. Which is probably what’s going to happen to most of them, at least, to begin with.

And there’s something _else_ that wouldn’t have bothered her a year ago:  the thought of an end, which is well and truly in sight.

Where will they go? Will they see each other again? Will they keep in touch? Will they be _able_ to keep in touch? How long until hell breaks loose and the end of all things finally thunders down upon them?

What will become of her, and Jack, and this _thing_ with her and Jack?

She doesn’t have time for this, so she blows the head off another mercenary and feels a little better.

They finish up and start the long trek back to the shuttle, Kasumi messing with her tactical cloak the entire time. Miranda’s been meaning to ask her what model that thing is because she could really do with one in the future, and she’s also been meaning to ask her for the latest details on that salarian Spectre who has suddenly developed a “voice like melted 60% dark chocolate over vanilla ice cream, with a little spiced rum on the side,” but Kasumi beats her to the personal questions this time.

“So, Miranda. _Jack_.”

She can’t turn a corner without someone badgering her about this lately. But. It’s Kasumi and it’s a safe bet she already knows everything.

“Yes, Jack. Jack lives in a hole in engineering and has covered about three-quarters of her skin with ink. She wears some very gaudy eyeshadow.”

“I suppose you’d know,” she chirps in that singsong lilt she uses when she _knows_ things. Beside her, Jacob lifts his hand to his mouth and turns to the side, and Miranda knows that look well; he is stifling his laughter. “Come on, everyone knows you’re at it. I’m on your side here.”

“And I suppose you think it’s hilarious, do you?”

“A little.” She grins, and even when Kasumi is teasing you, even when she’s being deliberately obtuse or ridiculous or pilfering your makeup box, it’s impossible to be cross with her. She’s like a very clever, very cute rabbit that keeps eating the vegetables in your garden. She knows it, too, and it’s probably gotten her out of trouble more times than she’d ever admit.

“It suits you, you know. You’re so relaxed lately. _And_ gorgeous, must be all those extra biotics. Those angry, half-naked biotics.”

Jacob laughs out loud at this, and then Miranda does too, because Jacob and Kasumi are laughing and it _is_ funny, really, and she almost wishes this could go on. Just wandering the galaxy, taking out pirates and mercenaries where they need and stopping to shop on Asteria and Illium and weaving her days together with Jack and good wine and visits with Oriana, listening to Samara’s stories and Shepard’s steady orders and laughing, just like this, with Jacob and Kasumi. It would be so easy.

It would.

Kasumi goes straight up to port observation with a promise to give her an update on Mr. Spectre tonight, and says to bring Jack along. “I know how to make margaritas, and we can play poker.” Whether she'll play poker _fairly_ is another thing entirely, but Miranda will take her up on it anyway.

She stays with Jacob in the weaponry for a bit, talking about nothing in particular while he tinkers with his pistol. “Been thinking I might take a month or so off, once this is done,” he says. His hands are large, wide-fingered, and Miranda thinks he would be good at most anything he put his mind to, if he could just find what that is.

“If anyone deserves it, it’s you. Any idea what you’ll do once the inevitable comes knocking?”

“Not the slightest.” He reaches for another gun to work on. He really does spend a lot of time at this. “Brazil sounds good. Maybe Italy, never have been there before.”

“You ought to try Italy. You wouldn’t believe the food.”

“Heh. It’d be nice to have the real thing for once.” He pauses, index finger tapping some gun part Miranda is utterly unfamiliar with, and leans on the table. “This has been good, you know? Better than I thought it’d be. Just too bad we have to give it all up.”

Oh, doesn’t she know it. “It is.”

Jacob folds his arms against his chest and looks around the room, and she wonders how the Normandy would feel without him. Without all of them. Who will fill up all these little rooms? Who will fix the guns and gravitate to Shepard’s side?

“Feels like we’ve been here for years,” he sighs.

She never could stand to see him look so damn _melancholy_. Miranda hates melancholy. “You know I’m always around, if you need anything.”

“What, Jack not keeping you busy enough?” He grins, and then she does, because Jacob’s smile breaks over you like a wave. “Thanks, Miranda. I’ll get it right, this time.”

She knows he will. They all will, because they’ve come too far and lived too much to let it go to waste now. They _can’t_.

* * *

More Blue Suns today, and more tomorrow, and after that, nothing.

Their routine is starting to get a little stale, and Miranda’s favors and good fortune have finally begun to run their course. She knows it. Shepard knows it. The crew knows it. She isn’t sure how much longer they can keep this up, and damn it, if Jacob mentions the Alliance one more time she just might snap.

But. Focus on _now_.

It’s easy work, and they’re done and gone before the morning is over, plenty of time to get to Nos Astra and ask Dr. T’soni if she has any work she might need done. She does, bless her deceptively sweet heart, and Shepard decides that now would be an excellent time to take some shore leave. Of course she does.

Miranda isn’t sure what to do, because for the first time in months and months, or—years, really, she has nothing _to_ do. She’s exhausted her extensive list of contacts and agents and double- and triple-agents, and there’s little she can manage for them at this point but help file the reports, make sure the money is going where it should and wait for the other shoe to drop.

She decides to make the most of it before those giant space squids come to barbeque them with lasers, though. That would be best.

She has dinner with Samara at a small café tucked away between rows of shops, and she would have asked Jack, too, but she disappeared this morning after the job was finished and hasn’t been seen since.

“I never cared much for Nos Astra,” Samara says, and Miranda knows. It’s one of the few places where she seems tense, or as close as Samara ever gets to tense, and if something is enough to give _Samara_ pause, well, you’d be wise to keep on your toes or avoid it altogether. “So many lies. All this bureaucracy and self-centeredness. Are any of these people truly happy?”

“Maybe some. Until someone else decides they want a bigger piece of the pie or it’s time to get rid of the competition.” There are a million Nassanas on Nos Astra, all vying for what the other has. Illium may be a cultural marvel, but it wears its ugliness in its marble floors and corporate suites. If you didn’t wind up having your own sisters killed, like Nassana, then you ended up paranoid and miserable, also like Nassana; or, you were yourself a murderer. Welcome to Nos Astra, where they eat their own on gilded china. What a place.

“And you? Are you happy?” Samara swallows a spoonful of soup and looks like she’s trying very hard not to smile. She seems to do that a lot around Miranda, lately.

But it isn’t the first time she’s given Miranda that all-knowing look and it won’t be the last, but it’s fine, because if there’s anyone—save Shepard—she would share this with, it’s definitely Samara. “You know, I am,” she says, and admitting it actually feels good. Almost like another bandage, and here she thought she was done pulling those up. “You must think it’s strange. Jack, and me, I mean.”

“I do not.” Her smile is a small thing, but it could probably stop Harbinger in his tracks; it whispers ten thousand different kinds of comfort and placidity, and it always warms Miranda down to her toes. She wonders where Samara’s other daughters are, how often they see their mother. “You are not as different as you believed. Now, were you?”

She bites that bit of thought down with her sandwich, and it doesn’t take her long to come to a nice, tidy conclusion. “No. No, we’re really not. I think you were expecting this all along, though.”

She laughs, a soft, airy thing Miranda has heard only rarely, and usually only when she’s talking about her children. “I am happy for you, Miranda.” Samara doesn’t coddle; she never says what she doesn’t mean, and when she holds Miranda’s hand between both of her own and looks her in the eye, it’s with a sincerity and a genuine kindness that Miranda has rarely—if ever—known. “Truly, I am.”

And— _oh_. This, she realizes, is what it’s like to have friends. Samara. Samara and Shepard and Jacob and Kasumi, even Mordin and Gabby down in engineering. And she hadn’t even realized it until she felt Samara squeeze her hand. For the first time in her life, she has friends that she can—and will—keep and treasure and fight for and care for, and all that good stuff. She has friends, and she has Oriana and Jack, and—and—

It’s not just about survival anymore. The Reapers are coming, and she has things to lose. Far more than she’s ever had before.

She mulls that over again later in the evening, over a bottle of pinot grigio and Jack, and suddenly feels very, very frustrated.

“How the hell are you supposed to stop those things? They can take out an entire planet in a few days.”

Jack, who seems slightly distracted, rolls her eyes and smacks her. “Why are you asking me? I don’t have any fucking answers.”

“Never do, do you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Language.”

“You fucking love it.”

“Where did you get to this morning, anyway?” Miranda asks, because she’s missed an opportunity to have dinner with her two favorite people on the ship, and Samara told her to bring Jack next time. Probably just so she could laugh fondly about it later, but. “You missed a highly enlightening dinner.”

“I had to do some stuff.” She hates it when Jack sounds so irritable, because it makes _her_ feel irritable and that’s no fun. “I told you.”

She doesn’t remember Jack ever telling her anything of the sort, and she’s just about to say as much when Jack’s mouth finds the swell of her breast, tongue trailing lazy lines across the skin and fingers clasping her hips, and then it’s a one-way trip to the bed with all thoughts of Reapers and where Jack actually went today driven from her mind.

“You’re so easy, princess. I bet you’d let me fuck you in the elevator.” Jack’s hair has grown out a bit more and it’s not like Miranda pictured. It’s dark brown, thick, and she loves the feel of it against her fingertips and between her thighs.

“I could be persuaded.”

Jack laughs against her chest, and as Miranda drifts off to sleep, she thinks of Samara and Shepard and Jacob and all the people she’s come to care for, her little sister, Jack with one patchwork arm thrown around her waist and a head of hair like silk.

She stands to lose a lot. She knows this. And maybe it’s the wine or the dreamy tendrils of sleep coming for her, but she thinks of the fire Shepard has that she doesn’t, and remembers how it doesn’t matter. Because she’s Miranda Lawson and she has a lot to lose, but she also has her certainty and her silver tongue and a will stronger than a hurricane to make sure she won’t.

And her biotics. She’s a damn fine biotic.

Miranda thinks she knows what she has to do.

* * *

“What does this one mean?”

“It means I killed an asshole who thought he could point a gun at me and get away with it.”

“And this?”

“Got that when I spent a few months in the best parts of the Citadel.”

Miranda traces a small pattern on Jack’s shoulder with the tip of her tongue, feeling the shudder run through Jack’s spine and into her mouth. There’s a small lamp on by the bed along with some abandoned wine glasses, and Jack’s skin practically glows underneath Miranda’s palms. She’s long since seen all her tattoos, so much that they’ve stopped running together like a second skin and become more distinguishable from each other, but she doesn’t know what they _mean_. And Jack does not deny her.

“Tell me about this,” she whispers, scraping her teeth and sucking gently along a large cross-stitch pattern on Jack’s inner thigh. She swirls her tongue along the skin, and then her fingers, and Jack sucks in a breath.

“I was on Terra Nova, because I needed money and I was supposed to kill a guy.” Miranda parts the folds with her fingers and laughs, low, when Jack gasps. “He was some asshole that pissed off a bunch of mercs somewhere, so me and two other people were going to take care of it and split the money.”

Miranda moves her fingers in small, leisurely circles around Jack’s clit, smirks when she gasps and bites her lower lip. “But after we were done, they decided they could make more if they—God, keep fucking doing that—if they turned me in too, because I was a criminal and all.” Miranda moves a little faster and is rewarded with a slight, involuntary jerk of hips and a moan. “Dumbasses.”

“They cornered me in the warehouse we were supposed to meet in when the money came through. And—” Miranda replaces her fingers with her mouth, dragging her tongue up and over in slow, lazy lines, and for a few minutes Jack seems to forget how to do anything but twist her fingers in Miranda’s hair and gasp.

“So I killed them,” she moans, and Miranda presses harder, and she loves this, loves the way Jack rocks into her mouth, the desperate sound of her voice when she flicks her tongue faster, harder. “I took—I took all the money and— _oh_ —I killed them all.” And then her fingernails dig into Miranda’s scalp and she comes, hips arching, Miranda’s hands gripping her thighs.

“Touching story. I take it you used the money to buy yourself all that ink?”

“Some of it.” She’s smiling, softly, and her eyes are half-lidded. Miranda kisses her, again and again.

Miranda’s fingers trail down Jack’s breasts to her ribs and her belly button, tracing her fingertips against the constellations of scars all over the skin there. Jack stiffens. “What?”

“Where did these come from?”

She jerks away as if struck and pushes herself back against the headboard, glaring. “Where do you _think_?” Her fingers dig into the sheets. Miranda remembers everything Jack said on Pragia, the things she’d never be able to get out of her head, all those _scars_ and, oh, she really wants to hit something right now. Or slam some heads into walls. Either one.

“I didn’t—” Miranda swallows. She hadn’t meant anything by it, truly; she’s been wondering about them for months and months, but she really should have known. This is not something they talk about because it’s not something Jack likes to think about, and there are lots of things Miranda has learned Jack doesn’t like. She hates feeling trapped or cornered, and _will not_ let anyone make her feel she is. She doesn’t much like talking about her childhood, or lack thereof. She hates being touched if she doesn’t do the touching first. Jack prefers to focus on the here and now and the soon-to-be, revisiting events and locations from her past only occasionally and dropping them like boulders through glass when she’s done with them.

Neither of them are terribly sensitive creatures, and Miranda isn’t sure what to do with this, but Jack is sitting with her knees pulled tight against her chest on Miranda’s bed and she isn’t speaking and Miranda has to try, because her mouth is dry and panic will start to set in soon if she doesn’t hurry. Or, worse, Jack might leave, and then Miranda _really_ won’t know what to do.

“I tried to run away, three times, before I finally got out for good.” She isn’t sure this is going to work at all or that it’s even a good idea, but it’s a sliver of _something_ and something is better than nothing when Jack is one step away from grabbing her clothes and walking out the door. “The first two times, I didn’t get far because I didn’t think things through, and my father found me. He gave me quite the tearing-down. Said I was nothing without him and my name, and I believed all of it.”

Jack blinks at her. Here is a particularly large bandage to peel off, and this one _burns_.

“The third time, I was older. Smarter. I was almost offworld when they caught me, and after that, he had me followed everywhere I went. And the last time,” she starts, stops, and starts again. “The last time, I finally made it. I did what I had to, to keep myself safe. I was free, but.” But.

“It took me until a few months ago to shake off the shackles and come to terms with it. And that’s a hell of a long time.”

Jack leans one arm on the bed and stretches her legs out in front of her. She isn’t glaring anymore, she’s, she looks—what is that? She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, and her eyes are a little brighter than they ought to be, and it makes Miranda’s chest ache.

“Jack, I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

She just moves, easy and sure, to sit with Miranda on the edge of the bed. Her skin is gold in the lamplight and her eyes are so dark and heavy it’s almost enough to break her heart. She leans against Miranda. “Don’t apologize to me. Dumbass.”

“I’ll apologize to who I damn well please.” She folds Jack back up into her arms and wraps the blanket around them, runs her fingers through her hair. They are like a bomb site, between the two of them. Scarred and rough right through, but teeming with new growth and knowledge and something all their own, vicious in their independence and wild in their passions. They are their own, and Miranda knows none will ever threaten that. Not now. 


	3. Chapter 3

“You look _good_. Something I should know?”

Oriana is smiling that summer-sweet smile and it’s so infectious (or maybe it’s just her mood these days) that Miranda laughs a little and grins along with her like she’s sharing a great secret. “Nothing much. I’ve slept properly for weeks now, maybe that’s it.”

“I’m sure. Who is he?”

“Ori—”

“She, then.”

“Ori.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t tell your sister who you’re seeing. It’s not like I poured my heart out to you or anything.”

The guilt hits her like an eighteen-wheeler, though that’s definitely not how Oriana meant it. “I… Hmm. Are you free in another week? We should meet up again. Maybe I’ll even bring her.” This is either a very bad idea or a recipe for a very happy and eventful trip to Nos Astra.

Oriana perks up at that and leans back in her chair. “Oooh, _her_? Who is it? Oh, wait, is it—”

“You’ll see.” _I hope_. “You are free, then?”

“Of course I am. Even if I wasn’t, I’d make sure I was.”

What did she do, before Oriana?

They make plans and talk about the ups and downs of school and Illium, and Miranda winds up telling her about justicars and what she knows of their Code, and Oriana is stunned nearly speechless that she has not only met one, but is rather good friends with her as well. “Can you bring her to dinner, too?” She asks, and Miranda laughs.

And then, while Ori plays her Canon in D like a lullaby (and it is the most devastatingly beautiful thing Miranda has ever heard), she tries to think of how to phrase what must come next. It hurts. She has all of _this_ , and soon, she knows, things will take their course and the galaxy will begin to unravel, and she must do what she can. But. It won’t always be this way; when it’s all over, it will be _better_ , easier, and for that, Miranda will fight to her last.

“Oriana, there might… I may not be able to talk to you much. Soon.” Oriana’s whole face falls, and that hurts, it’s wrong, but she _must_. “Things are going to get a little ugly. But they’ll get better, I promise. I’ll come out just fine.” Because she is Miranda Lawson and there is nothing in the galaxy as dangerous as her.

“I figured you’d say something like that, eventually.” Her brow creases, and she leans toward the computer screen like she always does when she’s worried or anxious or wants Miranda to know something no one else can know. _How_ she will miss this. “You know I’ll always be here if you need anything at all. And I’ll miss you.  A lot.”

Doesn’t she, though. “I love you so much, Ori.”

Later, playing idly with Jack’s hair—she’s thinking of shaving the sides, Miranda should have known the phase wouldn’t last—she casually mentions dinner, in a week, on Nos Astra, with someone important and how it would please her so much if Jack would come along.

“You don’t have to keep dancing around it, princess. I’ll fucking go anywhere if you’re paying for my food.”

“And you _will_ watch your mouth. If you pollute my sister’s ears with that trash, I’ll drag you back to the ship and scrub your mouth out with dish soap and wire wool.”

“Joke’s on you, I think that’s hot.”

She sighs, but she’s smiling too, and she’s pretty sure Jack will be on decent enough behavior. This is good. This is wonderful, in fact, and Miranda feels warm and happy and thoroughly pleased with life. She seems to be all of those things quite frequently, these days.

“Did I say you could stop?” Jack nips her ear, because apparently she’s stopped stroking her fingers through her hair. Jack likes that. She likes it, too.

Yes. This is good.

* * *

They make a quick stop on Nos Astra late in the afternoon, and one thing leads to another, and another, and then they’re going after the Shadow Broker. Because it’s not enough that Shepard took out a Reaper and the Collectors and countless mercenary scum, they have to go after the kingpin of information brokers, the crown jewel of galactic secrecy and intrigue. For fun.

The Shadow Broker. They’re going to kill him, or depose him, or whatever one does with an entity such as him. Or her. Or them.

This is happening.

She’s working her way through a bunch of his hired hands with Jack, alternating between slamming them into walls and thanking every deity and _thing_ she can remember—God, Samara’s goddess, that salarian wheel thing, spirits, all of it—that they’re not outside anymore, because that wasn’t just a long way down, that was an endless void of ice and lightning that just proved the universe had a shitty sense of humor. The ship really is a marvel of engineering, though; if they live through this, it’d be nice to see some of it.

“Holy shit, how do you even find your way through this thing?” Jack is so, so amazingly good at taking down large groups of stunned and stupid mercs. They never see her coming, and Miranda loves that shape she makes with her fists, the way her hair falls into her eyes just slightly. Underestimating Jack is the last mistake anyone ever makes and Miranda loves to see them do it.

“Are they really going to kill the Shadow Broker? Can you even do that?” She falls into step right beside Jack and takes out a group of three off to their side. She doesn’t know how many that makes. She lost count somewhere along the way.

“I don’t get paid to care,” Jack says, and, well, she’s right.

They blast their way through a few more corridors, trying to meet Shepard somewhere in between when Shepard meets them instead. Miranda’s omni-tool pings, and there’s Shepard with Tali and Dr. T’Soni and the drell they were coming here for in the first place, and—does that mean they killed the Shadow Broker?

“You can meet us down here, there shouldn’t be anyone left to shoot at you.”

“What did you do?”

“You should _see_ these contacts Miranda, I’ve got enough dirt on the turian Councilor to start three wars and make his wife file for divorce.”

“Shepard—”

“Liara will keep me in line until you get here. Maybe.” She grins. She seems giddy, exultant, and it’s so contagious that Miranda smiles back. “Try not to get in trouble, all right?”

She looks at Jack, who doesn’t look as surprised as Miranda feels. “I suppose that takes care of that.”

“The killing part? Or the not getting in trouble part?”

“You know.”

“Maybe I don’t.” Jack is leaning against the railing, light playing on her face and in her hair, and Miranda knew long ago that Jack was beautiful—because she _is_ and you cannot change what is—but it is also a fact that Jack is the most incredible thing in the universe and Miranda wants her right now more than she has ever wanted anything. She is violent and beautiful and the most fearsome, fantastic woman Miranda has ever known and she was so _wrong_ and it hits her so hard she feels a little dizzy.

“Jack,” she says, quietly, and it must be enough, because Jack lets her rest a hand on the side of her neck and she leans in to kiss her, never breaking eye contact. It’s soft and slow and sweet, the sort of thing they really shouldn’t be doing on a ship full of unfriendly mercenaries, but Jack’s mouth is full and warm and all Miranda wants is to sink into the exquisite, monstrous _everything_ that is Jack. It’s all she’s wanted for months. It may be all she ever wants.

Well. Maybe a good bottle of wine once in a while.

When she pulls back, they’re both breathless and Jack is clutching her shoulders, staring and _staring_ , and Miranda opens her mouth and tries for all the world to say something—she has to _say_ something—but the world is Jack and Jack’s eyes and her lips and her hair, and she is lost. But then, Jack pulls her down again, runs her tongue along Miranda’s lower lip, and she thinks that the thing she was going to say—the really important thing—probably doesn’t need to be said, because Jack just found it at the corners of her lips and the tip of her tongue, and she didn’t even need to wait for her to say it. _If you want something, fucking take it_.

“I rather like you, convict.”

“That’s what we’re calling it?”

“You like me. Don’t even start.”

Jack snorts, flashes that lopsided smirk and shoves at her. “I guess I don’t want to smear the walls with you anymore.”

Leaps and bounds, they’ve made. Shepard doesn’t know the half of it. Or, maybe she does. Miranda would rather not think about that “I can always find time in my schedule to fix that, should the need arise.”

“If you want me to take my pants off, just say so.”

“Save it for later. If you can manage.” Her turn to shove.

They make their way to Shepard eventually (there are lots of stops against some railing, and a wall or three, and then a flight of stairs), and there they find that Dr. T’Soni is the new Shadow Broker and that the old one was a yahg, full of teeth and seldom seen outside their homeworld. Who knew.

It takes a bit to sink in. They took out the Shadow Broker, put a new one in his place, and she said _everything_ without saying anything at all. _Eventful_ doesn’t even cover it. _Momentous_ , maybe, or _completely fucking inconceivable_. It’s like a shock through her veins and she barely gets any sleep at all, but for once, she doesn’t even care.

* * *

“What did you say?”

“About Liara’s freckles? Or, are they freckles? Do asari call them freckles, or are they just facial markings? Did you know Liara has those on her thighs? We should look this up, hang on.” Shepard makes a show of pulling up the extranet on her omni-tool, but she’s not being _stupid_. Shepard is not—is never—stupid. She knows perfectly well that she just said something she shouldn’t have, and she also knows perfectly well that Miranda isn’t going to let it slide.

“No, damn it, the other thing.”

“I—” Shepard sighs. Great. This is worse than she even thought. “You… She didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Miranda says, slowly, because she’s trying very hard not to explode all over Shepard’s cabin. “If she had told me, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

“Then it’s really not my place to tell you.” Shepard turns her back to Miranda, and she knows that’s the end of it. She will have to face down Jack herself, and she’s not waiting for her to stomp into her room this evening to do it.

Why is she even so upset that Jack didn’t tell her? It’s probably none of her business. Why does she care? Jack doesn’t have to tell her everything.

And, okay. Fine. Maybe she’s definitely a little (a lot) in love with Jack. What of it? Who cares?

She manages a smile and a strained “Hello” when she passes Gabby on her way down the stairs, and ugh, it’s so damp and dim and everything is bathed in that weird red light down here. How does she stand it? She could just move into Miranda’s cabin, and—oh God, is this what she’s become? Living her days pining after Jack, subconsciously dreaming of a nice house (Eden Prime, maybe?) and a job with decent hours and dinner at six and tepid, abhorrent _domesticity_? She tries to suppress a shiver that doesn’t come and doesn’t think about why that thought doesn’t bother her as much as it ought.

“Jack.” She bangs on the wall. She’s never come down her before on her own, and the idea of barging in on Jack down here in this… place, where she curls up and pulls away from the rest of them, feels nine different kinds of wrong. It always has.

“What the hell do you want.” She’s rubbing her eyes and looks like she’s just woken up. She’s definitely just woken up, because she’s not even glaring and her lips are turned down at the corners. Miranda wants to kiss them badly. “I was sleeping.”

“How do you sleep down here? It’s so…”

“I don’t. Most nights, anyway.”

Miranda really doesn’t like it down here. It’s like a cave. A strange, red, mildly creepy cave. “You could just move your things up into my room, if you like.”

“You want me to move in? Get on your knees and ask nicely and I might think about it.”

“You practically live there already, you degenerate.” She sits down, and Jack leans into her. Her hair tickles Miranda’s throat and she forgets how to be angry and, briefly, what she came down here for.

And that’s kind of important. “You were talking to someone from the Alliance. On Nos Astra.”

And there goes the mood; Jack bristles, sits up straight and frowns.

“Did—what the fuck, were you _following_ me?”

“No, damn it, you know I’d never do that. Shepard told me. She thought I already knew, and then she told me and then she wouldn’t say anything, so here I am.” Jack is taut as a bowstring next to her, but Miranda has seen this enough now to know that if you can just wait it out with Jack, give her space and silence and sit through all the earthquakes, you’ll both come out better in the end.

“They offered me a job.” Jack leans her head back against the wall. She’s got her hair in a tight ponytail today and Miranda didn’t even get to tell her how much she loves it. “Teaching. Kids. Shit, I didn’t know, so I asked Shepard what it was like, and I just… fuck. I don’t know.”

Miranda is fairly sure her brain short-circuits. Jack. Teaching. Teaching _kids_. In the Alliance.                                                                                                                                                                                                            

“Um.” _Say something_. “Hmmm.”

“If you start fucking laughing I swear—”

“I’m not! I’m not.” Though if she wasn’t quite so stunned, she might be. “I’m just surprised, is all. Really surprised.” Jack doesn’t say anything to that, just keeps staring at the opposite wall, so she cocks her head and asks, gently as she knows how, “Is this what you want?”

Jack looks at her with those wide, dark eyes and twists her lips a little. “Maybe.”

“So… if you’re teaching, you’d be at Grissom Academy. I assume.”

“That’s what he told me, yeah. I’d be teaching biotic kids to kick some ass.” She bites her lip and Miranda leans back a bit, an invitation Jack takes. She presses her nose into Miranda’s neck and sighs. “What do you think, princess?”

“This is the most important decision of your life and you’re asking me what _I_ think?”

“Well, yeah, dumbass. EDI says moral decisions and shit shouldn’t be made in a vacuum or something deep and meaningful like that. Besides,” she says, and Miranda can feel her lips curve into an easy smile against her skin, “I like you.”

It makes her heart pound.

“I think I’d like to hear what you want.”

Jack shifts and lies down, resting her head in Miranda’s lap and looking dreamy while Miranda plays with her ponytail. She hadn’t expected this. An offer to join the Alliance, sure, because you’d have to be insane _not_ to want Jack on your side, but teaching? Without a license, without experience. Jack really must have gotten herself noticed, and it makes Miranda flush just a little with pride, because Jack is incredible and she _wants_ people to notice it. She’s bloody fantastic and the whole damn galaxy needs to take heed.

“I think I actually want this,” she says, and, well, that’s good enough for Miranda.

“Then you’re going to be a teacher. You.” And now she _is_ laughing, and Jack pulls her hair until she can press their mouths together and get lost, for just a few minutes.

“I’ll assume they don’t know about your filthy mouth? Oh,” she’s laughing and laughing against Jack’s mouth now and can’t seem to stop, “those poor children.”

“I’ll save it all for you. I’ll wake you up every fucking night just to prove it.”

“You sweet thing. You dew-drenched blossom.” And she can’t quit laughing, but then Jack is laughing with her and pulling her down, and, oh, how could a person ever want more than this?

* * *

Shepard says they should all take some shore leave on Nos Astra, so Miranda does. She rents a room at a lakeside hotel, scopes out a few good restaurants, grabs Jack, and they’re off the Normandy by midafternoon for something of a weekend-long holiday.

The first thing she does is force Jack into the best store on Illium to find her some work-appropriate clothes. Jack hates trying things on, so they don’t bother, and by the time they’re done she has a few semi-reasonable shirts and some very, very low-cut pants. She looks _good_. Miranda tells her she looks good, for a drab, boring teacher, and it gets her a fist in her hair and teeth at her throat. But she does, though. Jack looks amazing, stunning, and if the Alliance can’t appreciate it they can send her to someone who can.

They have dinner at a French place that swears it makes better food than they do on Earth, and Miranda hasn’t been to Earth in a long time, but she’s almost inclined to agree. She has lobster Thermidor with fumé blanc, which Jack steals a sip of and immediately decides is awful.

“You’ve got the worst taste,” she informs Miranda through a mouthful of orange and almond sponge cake.

“Don’t I know it. Look what’s sitting across from me.” That gets her a kick to the shin and then the steel toe of a boot sliding across her ankle, gently, or, as gentle as a steel-toed boot can be. It’s nice.

Back in their room, they sit on the tiny balcony where the sun rips open the pale blue sky, and Miranda digs out that old bottle of rosé champagne she’s had lying around for who-knows-how-long. “You have to drink it slow,” she warns, because Jack is eyeing it like she’s going to gulp it down all at once.

“You’re no fucking fun and neither is your wine.”

“It’s not wine.”

“It’s basically wine.”

Miranda shows her how to take tiny sips and let the bubbles pop on your mouth and all the way down your throat, and Jack sort of gets it after the first glass. She tips it into their glasses again and again until they’re both very nearly as flushed as the champagne itself and smiling at nothing in particular. That might not be the champagne, though, she’s not sure.

“So I’m good enough for champagne now, huh?” Jack’s knee is touching hers and her head is tipped back into the light.

“You have delusions of grandeur. I’ve had this for half a year.”

“Right.” Jack’s head droops to her shoulder, and then Miranda’s fingers are in her hair like they belong there. Like this is the easiest thing in the world. “You _like_ me.”

“I suppose.”

Jack’s fingers trace patterns on the inside of her thigh, a quiet question pressed to her skin, and Miranda answers it with her lips at Jack’s shoulder, and then she’s grabbing Jack by the elbow and pulling her inside. She’s got her boots off when Jack wraps an arm around her waist and tugs, and they both fall rather awkwardly onto an unnecessarily large and fluffy bed.

“Damn it, hold on five seconds.” Jack isn’t even trying to untangle herself, fingers intent on getting Miranda’s front open.

“I’m done waiting, princess.”

Who is she to argue?

She lets Jack finish undressing her and then immediately pin her down against the sheets, and when she presses her thigh between Miranda’s legs, she rocks up against her, heart throbbing and her lips parted for Jack to take.

“You’re fucking _gorgeous_ ,” Jack says, breathless and wanting, and when Miranda’s done kissing her, Jack’s lips are red red _red_ and she’s got lipstick smeared across her chin.

“Wipe your mouth, convict.”

Jack presses in with her knee and the noise that escapes Miranda’s throat is needy bordering on desperate. Damn it. “Make me, bitch.”

Then it’s the slide of their skin, smooth and a little sweat-slick, and Miranda’s mouth working up her neck until Jack pulls away, trailing her knuckles down Miranda’s side as she goes;  it’s a slow thing, languid and gentle and almost luxurious as she outlines Jack’s tattoos with her teeth and tongue like she hasn’t done it a thousand times before.

“You got this when you escaped.” She kisses the hard black lines on Jack’s shoulder and she makes that happy, throaty growl Miranda loves.

“Yeah.” Jack grins and then there are teeth on Miranda’s lips. “You’re so fucking _romantic_.”

She bends her knees around Jack’s shoulders and lets her head fall back onto the pillow, the strong sweep of Jack’s tongue arching her hips and making her fists clench in the sheets until she’s drunk on sensation and babbling some nonsense— _Jack, oh—oh_ —when she comes, face flushed and head full of champagne and Jack and the Nos Astra sunset.

When she has half her wits about her again, she pushes Jack’s hand out of the way and bends over her back, fingers pressing faster and faster until Jack writhes against her and hisses something utterly vulgar, and Miranda bites down on her shoulder. When she finally tenses and breaks, she says something small, something that might possibly be Miranda’s name, but it’s so soft she might not have heard it at all.

After, they lie back on the bed and drink the last of the champagne with the curtains open and the warm Illium air flowing through the window. Lobster Thermidor, champagne and fantastic sex; if she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend they were in Paris. Or something.

“I’ll miss this.” She says it without thinking, which seems to have become a habit around Jack. “I _guess_.”

“Gonna cry yourself to sleep every night missing me. ‘Oh, Jack, I miss your mouth and your fingers in my—’”

“No.”

“You think you’re such a good liar. You’re really, really shitty.”

She will, though. Jack knows she will, but she’s not soppy enough to say it and it’s not a thing that needs saying at this point. She will miss Jack and Jack’s foul mouth and Jack’s tattoos and spending half a day lying about in bed and drinking wine without a bit of clothing in sight, work forgotten and previous engagements disregarded entirely. But it’s not as if it won’t happen again. That’s why they’re both going out into the galaxy, flying free from Shepard’s coop like the ducklings they are, to kick ass and go play hero where they can, right?

Right.

“Will you write me, convict? You should write me. Write me _poetry_.”

“I’m not writing you shit.” Jack sets her glass down and leans over to kiss her. She tastes like cake and champagne and _Jack_ and God, all she can think of is how quiet it’s going be, without her.

“Write me _love_ poems. Great soppy love poems.”

Jack growls and pulls Miranda on top of her, bites her lips until it hurts, and Miranda just laughs because she’s so damn _happy_ , because this is the all she wants, because Jack is in her arms and they can take the whole damn galaxy if they have to.

* * *

The next day is an exercise in the bittersweet and fatalistic:  she sees Oriana, probably the last time for a long while, and Samara leaves.

At the space port, she’s nervous. Not so much as the first time, but she’s still new to this and she’s never had anything resembling a proper dinner with her sister and her—her—

Jack. Whatever Jack is. She isn’t sure what to call it. (She isn’t sure there’s even an accurate word for it.)

When Oriana sees them, she smiles like a Cheshire and looks like she’s probably going to laugh about this a lot during their next talk, but then she hugs Jack— _and Jack lets her_ —and, well, Miranda feels like her heart might burst.

They have hamburgers and walk along the lakeside, dangling their feet over the bridge and talking about nothing in particular. People pass by and the sun sets and the rest of the world just seems to fall away around them; really, anything could happen at all and Miranda probably wouldn’t notice or care, because Oriana is leaning into her and Jack is talking about her new job and if there is anything else going on in the galaxy but this, Miranda doesn’t care to know it.

Saying goodbye, though, that’s another thing.

Oriana wishes Jack luck and says they need to do this again when they can, and Jack agrees, nary a hint of bad language until she tells Oriana she’ll “take care of your sister, don’t worry about it, I know she’s a pu—” which gets her a smack on the arm before she leaves Miranda with her sister, for one last goodbye.

“I won’t ask you to tell me what you’re doing.” Oriana hugs her so, so tight.

“I know.”

“Or where you’re going.”

“I know.”

“Or how long you’re going to be doing... whatever it is.”

Miranda can feel her eyes start to burn, and damn it, that will not do. “I’ll call you whenever I get the chance. It’s not forever.” It’s not.

“I’m so glad you’re happy,” Oriana says, and God, Miranda doesn’t want this to end. Not yet. She’s only just gotten used to being a sister and having friends and _Jack_ and loving and caring and being really, truly happy, for the first time in her damn life. It isn’t fair.

But. That is why she _must_. So she can have these things at all, in the future.

“You make me happy. You and that damned degenerate.”

It makes both of them laugh, and Oriana’s cab pulls up far too soon, uglier than corroded steel. She swallows.

“Ori,” she starts, and stops and swallows down that stupid lump in her throat. “I love you.” _I love you, I love you_ , it’s never enough. “I don’t know what I ever did without you.” Oriana’s hands clutch hers, eyes too bright and her smile trembling just slightly, and Miranda is trying very, very hard not to cry. She seems to be doing that a lot, lately, but damn it, this is important. “There’s not a damn thing in this galaxy that can keep me from you. Never.”

“I know,” Oriana says, very quietly. She squeezes Miranda’s hands and pulls her close, one last time. Miranda remembers, again, holding Oriana when she was only a few months old, those few hours she could pretend to be someone’s sister, how small she was, how her hand wrapped around Miranda’s finger while she slept. How she’s grown, and _how_ Miranda loves her in this moment. She watches Oriana walk to her cab; Oriana, who is nearly a woman now, who Miranda loves with a ferocity she imagines only an older sister can know.

Back on the Normandy the next day, she finds Samara’s door open and the justicar herself looking… something. Contemplative, yes, Samara is always contemplative, but she is quieter, somehow. Like she knows this is the last time; that it’s only going to get worse and worse, that this warship-home, this semblance of normalcy and happiness they’ve made for themselves isn’t going to hold up much longer.

“I will be gone in the morning.” She doesn’t turn around. Miranda simply sits beside her and looks out at the void, big and beautiful and terrifying as it is, and hurts, a bit.

“I’ll miss you.” She means it, and they fall into a comfortable silence. Samara is constant as the tide, beautiful and unknowable as the stars in the sky; she’s one of those people you can sit with and let the silence stretch out between you and it’s never uncomfortable at all. Miranda loves that. Who else is she going to have comfortable silences with?

They sit like that for a while, neither of them saying anything because they don’t have to, and Miranda wonders, again, about Samara and her children and how she _feels_ about all this. But, she doesn’t ask. There are a thousand things she wants to say, but she doesn’t ask.

When she gets up to leave, Samara stands with her like she’s always done and smiles, takes her hand between both of hers. “I am certain we will meet again.” Her eyes are like an ocean; Miranda counts the centuries, Samara bends her head and smiles.

“We will,” Miranda says, and this time she squeezes back. Because they will. Because they are friends, and Miranda will fight for the chance to see Samara again, to ask her the thousand things she wants to ask, to just sit with her and watch the universe pass them by and not say anything at all.

She will see Samara again. She will see Shepard and Jacob and Kasumi and Oriana, all of them. She will fight to her last. She _will_.

In her cabin, Jack is already lying on the bed, hair spilling over one of the pillows. Miranda doesn’t even bother to take off her boots when she lies down beside her and presses her nose into her neck, wanting very much for time to just stop for a few hours.

“Hey.” Jack curls an arm around her, and Miranda closes her eyes and finds the only comfort she cares for in the slope of Jack’s shoulder and the painted skin of her neck. It will be all right, she thinks. She _knows_. But there’s just so much to _miss_ between now and then, and she’s never had to account for that, before.

* * *

“Yeah, you like that, don’t you. Don’t think I can’t see you looking.”

“I am not.”

“Bullshit. I look _good_.”

“That, you do.” Jack sways her hips very deliberately as she goes to get her last bag. She _does_ look good. She’s wearing that white shirt Miranda picked out for her on Nos Astra and she’s shaved the sides of her head, but it doesn’t look as frightful as Miranda was afraid. Just… good. Very, very good. And she’s happy, smiling, laughing that laugh Miranda loves, even leaning on her during the cab ride here. Their driver got a bit of a show and probably learned a few new words on the way over, and it’s everything Miranda can do to keep from grabbing her right now and pulling her up for a kiss. Again. For the last time.

Or, no. Not the last time. It’s just that they’re doing the long-distance thing now, and Miranda doesn’t know what she’s doing but neither does Jack, so it’ll be okay. She doesn’t know, but she will _learn_.

But there’s such a sense of finality to this. She hates it. In a few hours, Jack will be at Grissom Academy, probably getting a tour and learning what “professionalism” means, and Miranda will be in a hotel room on the Citadel, organizing help and getting information to other defectors and learning all the nuances of life on the run.

Miranda Lawson, on the run, and Jack, a _professional_. It would be hilarious if their days weren’t so numbered.

“Is this the part where you watch my shuttle take off and cry like a bitch? Because I’d rather not see that.” Jack smirks and slides up against her, and—and—oh, why do the Reapers have to come _now_? Why couldn’t they have all been born a thousand years later, when this was all done and settled and they could just laze about and lead halfway normal lives?

Because then, they wouldn’t be themselves. Probably. Or some other nonsense Shepard would say.

“I suppose I ought to say I’ll miss you.”

“Guess you should.”

“And how I wish you luck and I’ll call all the time.”

“And how you’ll cry yourself to sleep and touch yourself every night but it won’t be the same because I’m—”

“Never.”

“Whatever. We both know better.”

Miranda laughs and shoves her a little, and yeah, Jack is probably right. She will miss her, desperately. More than she can (or will) put to words, so they just stand like that for a bit, Jack’s arm around her waist, watching the cabs come and go until Jack’s finally arrives and it’s time to let go.

“I _will_ miss you, you know.” She didn’t plan this, didn’t rehearse a speech, nothing. She didn’t have to, because Jack knows it all, and how _incredible_ is it, to have someone who knows what you want to say even when you don’t? Bloody miraculous, that’s what. “A lot.”

Jack doesn’t smile, but her eyes are soft, wide, and they’re the most beautiful things Miranda has ever seen. “I’ll miss you too. I guess.” And then she leans up and kisses Miranda, hard, teeth playing at her lower lip and they’re in the middle of a crowded space port and Miranda doesn’t care at all. _How_ things change.

“You better fucking call me.” Jack looks absolutely vicious, and Miranda wants nothing more than to follow her into that cab and go. She could go anywhere at all in the galaxy with Jack. She could.

If only.

“And you better write me, convict. I expect those poems. Love letters, too.”

“You’ll be waiting a while.”

“I’m a patient woman.”

That gets her a laugh, and Jack curls her hands around her shoulders. “Bullshit.”

It is a trial to walk Jack to her cab knowing she won’t see her again for a long while, at least not in person, and with what’s going to come, she knows there’s a chance it will be difficult to see her at all. The thought of not seeing Jack for days, weeks, months at a time hurts, makes her throat burn and her stomach tighten with fear.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

Jack is glaring, or maybe not glaring—that’s just her face, really—but just _looking_ , hard, the way she does once in a while when she thinks Miranda can’t see. It’s intense, maybe even a little murderous, and the fingers gripping Miranda’s elbow say a hundred things Jack does not.

“Stay safe. Because I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and Miranda shivers because it’s _so much_.

“I’ll be waiting, then.” She kisses Jack like a promise, softly; and she does, indeed, watch her cab fly off, and her eyes do water, just a bit. It must be the dry summer air.

* * *

In the morning, Shepard turns herself in to the Alliance, and Miranda scopes out a safe place a few relays away over her morning coffee. The Alliance doesn’t care to listen to Shepard; or, rather, they’re hoping desperately that if they ignore the problem, it might go away, which is a lot like trying to ignore a nasty infection that’s beginning to spread. It just makes her angry, so she gets another cup and checks her messages to find that she’s got one from Samara, which makes her smile, and another from an address she does not recognize until she reads the text.

And she really should have seen this coming.

_Hey asshole,_

_I didn’t write this but it suits you._

_she pulled her dress off_

_over her head_

_and I saw the panties_

_indented somewhat into the_

_crotch._

_it’s only human_

_now we’ve got to do it._

_I’ve got to do it_

_after all that bluff._

_it’s like a party—_

_two trapped_

_idiots_

It’s not even that obnoxious, but Miranda laughs and laughs and laughs, because Jack actually sent her _poetry_. Not a love poem—never a love poem—but a vaguely filthy thing she probably sought out just for this. It’s beautiful. When she’s caught her breath again, she sends one back and starts packing her things for the second time in as many days. She will be doing this a lot, now.

She has no plan for any of this, no grand schedule for where she’ll go and when they’ll meet again, and she isn’t going to try this time. Because she has a little sister and friends and _Jack_ , tattoos memorized like a star map and the certainty of knowing where she wants to be—where she _will_ be. And that is damn well all she will need.

This, she will keep. She will fight. She will _conquer_. And she will come out the other end with everything she has won.

So Miranda sends another message, grabs her things, and breathes in the balmy seaside air like courage.


End file.
